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NAIROBI, Kenya (The Guardian) – August 7, 1998, was the day Mohammed al’Owhali had chosen to die. His mission, to destroy the American embassy in Nairobi. By 11am, 213 people were killed and 4,600 were injured in a massive blast… but not al’Owhali. As the Saudi bomber begins his life sentence in a US jail, Jason Burke uncovers the secret FBI files on the suicide bomber who changed his mind.
Al’Owhali was born, oddly enough, in Liverpool, on 18 January 1977. His father, from a prominent and wealthy Saudi family, was in England doing a master’s degree at the university. His son was too young when he left to remember his only fleeting experience of life in the West.
He was a normal child, if rather withdrawn, who, from his early teens, was powerfully attracted to orthodox Islam. His reading material included books with names such as The Love and Hour of the Martyrs.
In addition to the Koran and the great works of Islam, he read about America and the West and particularly about the duty of all Muslims to resist any attempt to subjugate the nations of Islam. He was 10 at the beginning of the first Palestinian Intifada, 14 during the Gulf War and, like many, felt the continuing presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia after Operation Desert Storm to be an outrage and an insult. He was 15 and 16 during the fighting in Bosnia and the massacre of the Muslims there, 17 when the Americans intervened in Somalia. Every episode marked him, though there is no evidence of any abnormal behaviour. Al’Owhali might have been odd, but he wasn’t mad.
After high school he spent two years at university in Riyadh, studying Islamic jurisprudence. In 1996, when he was 19, a friend returned from fighting in Bosnia and started him thinking about joining a jihad himself.
Again, if you are looking for reasons, there is little in this to explain subsequent events. Dreams of martial glory are hardly uncommon in 19-year-olds all over the world.
The camp was (and still is) an induction camp for volunteers from the Islamic world who want to fight – some for their beliefs, some for the excitement, some for the camaraderie and the sense of purpose. Within weeks, al’Owhali was proficient with light weapons, basic demolition techniques, some artillery, rudimentary tactics and tactical communications.
He was committed and able, and did well. After two months’ training, like a star pupil at primary school, he won a prize: an audience with Osama bin Laden.
Bin Laden is now an almost mythic figure. His lean, bearded face is as familiar to us as those of the Red Brigade and Carlos the Jackal were two decades ago. In a single week in June, news reports linked him with attacks or planned attacks in Canada, Jordan, the Yemen, India, Spain, France, Cyprus and the Philippines. According to George Tenet, the director of the CIA, bin Laden is ‘the most immediate [global] threat to American security today’.
Shortly before al’Owhali met him in late 1996, bin Laden had been ordered to leave the Sudan by the government in Khartoum. He chartered a plane and flew directly to Afghanistan – a country he, too, knew well. Sixteen years earlier, days after the Soviets invaded the country, he had made his way to Peshawar to offer his help and the resources of his hugely rich family in the fight against the Red Army. He was, then, about the same age as al’Owhali.
During the war, bin Laden ran an organisation which, with American support, recruited young Muslims from all over the world, trained them, armed them and sent them into battle. He created an ‘International Brigade’ of Islamists to fight the Soviets. Some experts say 30,000 men served in it. In so doing, he founded an international network of like-minded men that would be useful later on.
But, though al’Owhali hardly knew him before they met, the older man’s message must have resonated strongly. Bin Laden told his young compatriot that he was needed to expel the US from the lands of Islam. Al’Owhali asked for a ‘military mission’ and, on finishing his training in Khaldan camp, was moved to camps run by al’Qaeda (‘the base’), bin Laden’s group. There he received more specialised instruction in terrorism.
While he waited for al’Qaeda to give him a mission, al’Owhali fought for the Taliban – the hardline Islamic militia fighting for control of Afghanistan. One particular engagement, known as the C-Formation battle, made al’Owhali something of a hero. The action took place on the plains north of Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital. The Taliban had attacked opposition forces massed northeast of the city, but had been beaten back. Al’Owhali and five others held off massively superior forces, giving their comrades time to retreat and regroup. His ability and loyalty were proved – at exactly the right time.
On 22 February 1998 a new fatwa was issued in the name of the ‘World Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders‘. It was signed by bin Laden and the heads of major Islamic movements in Egypt, Pakistan and Bangladesh. It said:
‘To kill the Americans and their allies – civilians and military – is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque [in Jerusalem] and the Holy Mosque [in Mecca]… and to force their armies to withdraw from all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim.’
The threat implicit in the call to arms was not an idle one.
ONE MONTH AFTER PUBLICATION OF THIS ARTICLE … SEPT. 11, 2001
WHAT HAVE WE GAINED .. WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED??? THERE ARE ONLY LOSERS.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
