Testimony TiesTerror Suspect to bin Laden

By LIBERTY JOHN & ANNA GLEKSMAN

An anti-terrorist crime scene examiner presented documents in Manhattan Federal Court on Tuesday that appeared to link Saudi defendant Khalid al-Fawwaz on Tuesday linked him to threats to “launch an assault on the satanic American troops and their allies” and also linking his name to Osama bin Laden.

The examiner, Stephen Charles Gregory, testified that he found the documents while a London office that was leased to al-Fawwaz, 53.

Under cross-examination, however, the witness said he could not recall the location of the documents on the fax machine, whether they were in the tray for sending or receiving, leaving open the possibility that the defendant did not write but merely received them.

Fawwaz is accused of participating in planning the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in which 224 persons were killed. The attacks have spurred three trials and implicated several defendants in the decades since they occurred; he is the third Al Queda figure to face trial in New York recently.

The trial began Thursday with al-Fawwaz pleading innocent to charges of conspiracy to kill Americans, to destroy buildings and property of the United States and to attack national defense utilities.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas Lewin in opening statements portrayed al-Fawwaz as a senior member of al Queda and a trusted operative who had worked for bin Laden when it was a close-knit group in the 1990s.

Lewin told the jury that al-Fawwa had been living in London as a peaceful Saudi dissident but was actually spreading the “Al Queda message”.

Originally, he had two co-defendants, Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai and Adel Abdul Bary. Al-Ruqai had liver cancer and died last month, delaying the trial, and Bary has pleaded guilty.