US: A suspect in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in east Africa, whom US agents picked up in Mogadishu last week and took to Nairobi for questioning, was headed to the US yesterday for trial, a Kenyan minister said, naming the suspect.
"The al-Qaeda terrorist operative, Suleiman Abdalla, alias Ngaka, alias Chuck Norris, has provided useful information related to the August 7th, 1998, terrorist attacks in Kenya and Tanzania," National Security Minister Chris Murungaru told reporters in Nairobi.
He said the suspect was in his early 30s and had claimed during interrogation to be Kenyan, Afghan, and a national of several other east African countries.
Although the minister insisted Kenyan officials had apprehended Abdalla in Mogadishu last week, witnesses in the hospital where he was picked up said six armed US agents in plain clothes had carried out the arrest.
Alleging that the suspect actually participated in the "planning and execution" of the 1998 bombings, the minister said "it has been decided that (he) should be taken to the US for trial like all previous suspects." The bombings killed 213 people in Kenya and 11 in Tanzania.