Page 288 - Encyclopedia Of Terrorism

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268———Odeh, Mohamed Sadeek (1965– )

Further Reading In 1994, Odeh settled near the Somalia-Kenya bor-
der in the coastal city of Mombasa, where he supported
Chailand, Gerard, ed. A People Without a Country:
The Kurds and Kurdistan. Northampton, MA: Interlink, himself and Al Qaeda with a fishing boat supplied by
February 1993. the group. Odeh met and married a Kenyan woman and
Gunter, Michael M. The Kurds and the Future of Turkey. fathered two children, one of whom was born after his
New York: St. Martin’s, 1997. arrest, and he never saw.
Olson, Robert. The Kurdish Question and Turkish-Iranian Odeh was in custody since the day of the embassy
Relations: From World War I to 1998. Costa Mesa, CA: bombings. He had fled Kenya the night before on a
Mazda, 1998. flight to Karachi with another conspirator who passed
Pakistani immigration officials without incident. But
at Karachi Airport, just hours before the explosions,
ODEH, MOHAMED SADEEK (1965– ) officials detected Odeh’s Yemeni passport was fake—
the picture did not resemble Odeh—and detained him.
In his postarrest statements to the FBI, Odeh said
Mohamed Sadeek Odeh was one of the first he felt a moral responsibility for the embassy bomb-
two people convicted of playing a direct role in the ings, because of he was a paid member of Al Qaeda.
August 7, 1998, terrorist bombing of the U.S. embassy He denied a role in the plot, but trial evidence impli-
in Nairobi, Kenya. On May 29, 2001, a federal jury in cated him. Clothes inside his carry-on luggage were
New York found him guilty of participating in the laced with TNT residue. In the days before the attack,
attack and of murdering the 213 people, including 12 Odeh had stayed a mile from the target at the same
Americans, killed as a result of the explosion. Pro- downtown Nairobi hotel as other bombing conspira-
secutors had not sought the death penalty against tors and registered under the name on his fake pass-
Odeh, but the trial judge sentenced him to life in U.S. port. His fingerprint was found on the East Africa cell
prison without the possibility of parole. leader’s hotel room door.
Odeh, a Jordanian and Kenyan national of Pales- Prosecutors described Odeh as a “technical adviser”
tinian heritage, was one of four defendants who went to the Kenya bombing. In his mud-walled, thatched-
on trial in Manhattan federal court in January 2001 for roof home in rural Witu, Kenya, investigators found
the Kenya bombing and the coordinated but less lethal two handwritten sketches of the embassy compound
bombing of the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam, where and roads surrounding it. They also found an Arabic
11 people were killed. He and his codefendants were ledger detailing his fishing expenses; it had one
all found to be part of a worldwide terrorist conspiracy entry listing $1,400 in weapons and artillery
led by Saudi exile Osama bin Laden and carried out by for “work,” a code word for jihad. Odeh told the FBI
his Islamic militant organization, Al Qaeda. Odeh, that other Al Qaeda code words were “tools” for
who underwent weapons and explosives training at Al weapons, “papers” for fake documents, “soap” for
Qaeda camps inside Afghanistan in 1992, admitted to TNT, and “potatoes” for grenades.
being a “soldier” of the group who had sworn a loyalty During his interrogation, Odeh told FBI agent John
oath, or bayat, to bin Laden. Anticev that he thought the bombing was a “blunder,”
Odeh was born in Saudi Arabia in 1965 and grew up because it killed so many Kenyan civilians who did
in Jordan. He studied engineering and architecture at a not work in the embassy. “The people who drove the
university in Manila starting in 1986, and it was in the truck should have gotten it into the building or died
Philippines where he was exposed to radical Islam and trying,” Anticev recalled Odeh telling him.
gained interest in the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan. Odeh also explained that Al Qaeda cells were split
In 1990, he went to join the mujahideen. With the into planning and execution phases, with members of
Afghan conflict winding down, Odeh was among the one group not necessarily knowing the other. For
militants dispatched to Somalia in 1993 to train native example, there was no evidence that Odeh ever met
Somalis who, like Al Qaeda, considered the U.S. mili- Mohamed Rashed al-’Owhali, his trial codefendant,
tary presence there “colonization,” although the mis- who helped assemble the Nairobi bomb truck and
sion began as part of a U.N. peacekeeping operation. rode in it to the embassy. Odeh told Anticev that the
Somali fighters killed 18 U.S. Army Rangers in an cell’s planning group assessed a target’s construction
October 1993 battle in the capital city of Mogadishu. and vulnerabilities, probes for security weaknesses,