1998 U.S. Embassy blast suspect reported killed

[Ropey]

1998 U.S. Embassy blast suspect reported killed

Al Qaeda leader Fazul Abdullah Mohammed (inset), wanted for overseeing the 1998 bombing of the United States Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. The blast killed 213 people, including 12 Americans. (FBI/AP Photo/Dave Caulkin)

Read more: 1998 U.S. Embassy blast suspect reported killed - CBS News

The al-Qaida operative behind the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania has been killed, a Somali official said Saturday.

Somali officials have determined that a man killed by security forces on Tuesday was Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, said a spokesman for Somalia's minister of information, Abdifatah Abdinur.

"We've compared the pictures of the body to his old pictures," he said. "They are the same. It is confirmed. He is the man and he is dead. The man who died is Fazul Abdullah."

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said: "There's strong reason to believe he's dead. He was killed at a police checkpoint in Mogadishu."

Abdinur said Somali the government is planning to issue a statement confirming Mohamed's death.

Before the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, Mohammed trained Islamic militants in Somalia. He later organized attacks on Israeli tourists in Kenya.

"He's an extraordinarily dangerous individual," Dan Coleman, a retired FBI agent who spent years hunting al Qaeda, told CBS News in 2007. "He's the real deal."

According to testimony and evidence introduced during the 2001 embassy bombings trial in New York, Mohammed rented the walled villa in Nairobi where the conspirators assembled the Kenya embassy truck bomb. On the day of the attacks, he drove a white pickup as lead vehicle ahead of the explosives-laden truck toward the embassy.

1998 U.S. Embassy blast suspect reported killed - CBS News

They can run and hide. For a while....

 

[waltky]

Fazul's death hurts al-Qa'ida: Clinton...

Clinton hails shootout killing of embassy bomb mastermind Fazul Abdullah Muhammad
June 12, 2011 : THE Obama administration has hailed the death of al-Qa'ida's presumed head in east Africa in a shootout as a "significant blow" to the terror organisation.

"It is a just end for a terrorist who brought so much death and pain to so many innocents in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam and elsewhere - Tanzanians, Kenyans, Somalis and our own embassy personnel," US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Tanzania's commercial capital Dar es Salaam, during an African tour.

Fazul Abdullah Muhammad, who was wanted for blowing up the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, died in a shootout in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, officials say. The 38-year-old was thought to have planned the massive truck bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam that killed 224 people in 1998 and had a $US5 million ($A4.73 million) bounty on his head, making him Africa's most wanted man.

"We have confirmed by DNA tests carried out with our partners that it definitely was Fazul Abdullah," an official at Somali's National Security Agency said. A commander of Somalia's rebel Al-Shabaab movement said earlier this week that Fazul was one of two men killed near Mogadishu. "He is not dead as thousands like him are still in the fight against the enemy of Allah," the commander added. A senior official from the Obama administration said Fazul's death "removes one of the terrorist group's most experienced operational planners in East Africa and has almost certainly set back operations".

The official credited the "good work" of Somalia's Transitional Federal Government forces in killing Fazul. His death was also confirmed by Kenya's top police officer Matthew Iteere. TFG officials said the men were killed at a roadblock on Tuesday night after taking a wrong turn. "Our forces fired on two men who refused to stop at a roadblock. They tried to defend themselves when they were surrounded by our men," said TFG military commander Abdikarim Yusuf. The two men were driving in a pickup truck full of medicine, laptops and mobile phones. They appeared to have taken a wrong turn while trying to reach a Shabaab position and ended up in an area under TFG control.

MORE