Nearly four years before the simultaneous 1998 bombings of two U.S. Embassies in Africa, members of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network began conducting surveillance at one of the bombing sites, a sworn follower of bin Laden testified Wednesday in federal court.
The surveillance techniques used at the Nairobi, Kenya, site were sophisticated, according to L’Houssaine Kherchtou, a Moroccan-born former chef, who gave a detailed account of the surveillance training he received in Pakistan, where he joined bin Laden’s organization al Qaeda, or The Base, in April 1991.
Kherchtou, 36, was the second former member of al Qaeda to testify as a government witness during the trial of four bin Laden associates charged in the bombings.
Bin Laden and 17 others are also charged in connection with the explosions in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, on Aug. 7, 1998. Bin Laden, an exiled Saudi millionaire, is believed to be in Afghanistan under the protection of the extremist ruling Taliban.
During his testimony, Kherchtou pointed out defendants Wadih El-Hage and Mohamed Sadeek Odeh, identifying them as his comrades in bin Laden’s service.
Kherchtou said he met Odeh, a Jordanian, at one of bin Laden’s training camps in Afghanistan and saw him again later in Kenya. Kherchtou said he worked for El-Hage, a Lebanese-born American citizen, in Kenya and lived in an apartment behind a house rented by El-Hage, a former Texan.
El-Hage and Odeh face the possibility of life in prison without parole if convicted of conspiracy in the bombings. The other defendants on trial, Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, a Tanzanian, and Mohamed Al-‘Owhali, a Saudi, face the death penalty if convicted.
Kherchtou said al Qaeda sent him to Kenya in October 1993 to learn how to fly aircraft with the goal of becoming bin Laden’s personal pilot. Late in 1994 or early 1995, he said, his former instructor in surveillance and two of his former classmates showed up at his Nairobi apartment.
They commandeered the sitting room, he said, covering the windows with blankets and turning it into a photo darkroom. For a week, he said, they worked all day and left at night, taking their equipment with them.
Though he never saw the contents of the photos they developed, Kherchtou said: “It was a surveillance. … I understand what they are doing. Very obvious.”
Kherchtou had studied in Pakistan with surveillance instructor Abu Mohamed al Amriki. Kherchtou said he had been called to bin Laden’s house in the residential Hyatabad area of Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1992 and told by bin Laden’s military chief, Abu Hafs al Masry, to study surveillance with al Amriki.
Al Masry told Kherchtou that al Amriki was a very strict teacher but not a very observant Muslim and warned the student to be ready for “bad words” coming from the mouth of the teacher.
For two weeks, Kherchtou said, al Amriki rigorously trained the students in the art of surveillance, including visual reconnaissance and photography, locating targets on maps, using hidden cameras, developing film, and making prints. He also taught them to write detailed surveillance reports including floor plans, the thickness of a target’s walls and other tactical information.
The students practiced their new craft on bridges, sports stadiums, the Iranian consulate and other sites around Peshawar.
For experience in following a subject on foot and by car, they spied on an Egyptian diplomat in Peshawar, he said.
Eventually, al Amriki told Kherchtou that they had been assigned to do surveillance on French targets in Senegal, the Moroccan said.
That never happened. He said one day al Amriki got a call on El-Hage’s mobile phone from a friend in America telling al Amriki that he had better come home to “resolve his problems.”
Al Amriki left Kenya.
Kherchtou is expected to continue his testimony Thursday.
