Cover of Fadil Harun’s book
Mombasa, around late October 1997. It was a rainy day in the Kenyan port city and Fadil Harun was playing table tennis at home. A seasoned al-Qa‘ida operative who trained and fought in Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa, Harun was then acting as the “security official” for the group’s East Africa cadre. Born and raised in the Comoros Islands, he had just come back from a month-long stay in his native homeland where he attended his mother’s funeral. On that rainy day, after the sunset prayer, Harun received the visit of Fahd al-Kini, a Kenyan member of al-Qa‘ida who had recently been to Afghanistan. “Abu Muhammad al-Misri is here”, Fahd announced, referring to the man in charge of the organization’s external operations. “Are you kidding?”, Harun asked. “I swear, he is in Mombasa and I brought him here in my car”, Fahd answered. Given that Abu Muhammad “does not move except for external work”, Harun immediately understood: Usama bin Ladin’s “war against the Americans” was about to begin.
Marking the early origins of Harun’s involvement in the East Africa embassy bombings, this episode features in the Comorian’s autobiography published online in February 2009. This made him the first member of the cell to offer a first-hand account about the topic. Fourteen years before Abu Muhammad, Harun discussed the planning behind the attacks with a level of detail rarely seen in al-Qa‘ida’s writings. Assisting the leader of the operations, Abu Muhammad, throughout the plot, the Comorian was one of the few to be in the know about the whole process.
In the first installment of this series, we saw how the project of striking the U.S. in East Africa was initially proposed by Fahd to al-Qa‘ida’s leadership in Afghanistan in late 1996-early 1997. Tasked with overseeing the plot, Abu Muhammad moved from Afghanistan to East Africa in September 1997, reconnecting with Fahd in Nairobi shortly afterward. Drawing on both Abu Muhammad’s and Harun’s accounts, this second installment delves into how the Comorian and others were recruited into the plot, as well as how Abu Muhammad and his men devised their operational planning.
Security Concerns on the Coast
As his travel to Mombasa indicates, Abu Muhammad was not in Kenya only to brainstorm with Fahd and support him financially. The Egyptian’s other goal was to link up with al-Qa‘ida’s four strong core cadre based on the Kenyan coast. All veterans of Afghanistan and Somalia, these four men had stayed behind when their colleagues relocated to Jalalabad in 1996. In charge of managing the organization’s “Somalia file”, this core cadre was led by Mustafa al-Misri, a senior military figure from Egypt who had been trained by Abu Muhammad in the Afghan camps. In addition to Harun, Mustafa’s associates were fellow Egyptian Shu‘ayb al-Misri and Marwan al-Filistini, a Jordanian national.
As soon as he heard about his former instructor’s arrival in Mombasa, Mustafa let him know that he wanted to meet up. The two old comrades reunited in a house in Mombasa, where they stayed all night discussing the latest news. After briefing Abu Muhammad on al-Qa‘ida’s activities and relations in Somalia, Mustafa evoked the problematic case of Harun. The Comorian, according to him, was “very negligent” when it came to operational security. Instead of adopting a low-profile, Harun had been forging relations with all sorts of “suspicious people” in Nairobi, including some Somali business owners. Ignoring all the warnings, Harun ended up alienating Mustafa, who feared that the Comorian’s reckless behavior “could cause a disaster for everyone [in Kenya]”.
In light of these concerns, Mustafa urged Abu Muhammad to order Harun to leave Kenya “as soon as possible”. Instead, he suggested, the Comorian should “join the brothers in Afghanistan”, where working on the front required less “security precautions”. It was now up to the new emir in town, Abu Muhammad, to decide the fate of Harun.
The next day, Abu Muhammad and Harun met in a tourist area of Mombasa on the shore of the Indian ocean. The two talked for “several hours”, with Harun defending his point of view. According to him, far from being reckless, his behavior was actually “very normal”. As a Black African speaking Swahili with years of experience in Kenya, the Comorian argued, he blended in perfectly with his surroundings and could thus afford to socialize outside jihadi circles without raising suspicion.
Eventually though, Abu Muhammad ruled that Harun “leave immediately” for Afghanistan, with a stop in Sudan where he would “collect some funds for the Shaykh [i.e., Bin Ladin]”, the Comorian contended. As the latter was arranging his departure, Abu Muhammad made a brief trip to the coastal city of Malindi, where he met the two associates he had not seen yet, Shu‘ayb and Marwan, to discuss the “Somalia file”.Before parting ways, the three agreed on meeting again in a month, once Abu Muhammad would be back from Sudan, where he needed to travel for “some tasks”.
The Cell Expands
By early November, Abu Muhammad was back in Khartoum. So far, despite the number of “brothers” he had met in Sudan and Kenya, only one of them, Fahd, was working on the East Africa plot. The Egyptian thus decided to begin expanding the cell by recruiting his old friend Talha al-Sudani. “I told him that I needed him for a special job”, Abu Muhammad said. Without knowing further details, Talha welcomed the proposal. Abu Muhammad then briefed the Sudanese on the mission at hand, explaining that it was not without risks and could take some time but that its success would yield “positive outcomes”.
Talha, for his part, had good news: he had managed to find a transfer system “far removed from complex and monitored banking transactions” which would enable Abu Muhammad to receive funds whenever needed. The two then met a potential unwitting accomplice at Khartoum’s International University of Africa. Initially suspicious, the unnamed man “in his forties” ended up accepting to move some money on their behalf, in return for a commission.
Although Abu Muhammad did not specify it in his book, the transfer mechanism found by Talha was most likely the informal and trust-based hawala system. In his memoirs, Harun explicitly referred to this, stating that part of the funds used for the East Africa bombings had been moved from Khartoum to Kenya by hawala.
In addition to the East Africa plot, Abu Muhammad was also busy preparing for his upcoming trip to Yemen, where his Afghanistan-based hierarchy had assigned him to go to initiate the Yemen plot. To travel, he needed another passport, which he obtained via Talha. The Egyptian, in turn, gave it to a “trustworthy” Tunisian “brother” whose task was to doctor the document.
As agreed before leaving Afghanistan, Abu Muhammad maintained communication with his chain of command in Kandahar to keep them updated about the latest news and receive guidance. From Khartoum, he contacted al-Qa‘ida’s top military leader Abu Hafs al-Misri, informing the latter about his peregrinations between Sudan and Kenya and his imminent travel to Yemen. Having been informed about the Harun case, Abu Hafs suggested that, instead of moving to Afghanistan, the Comorian could be included in “the team that will be working in East Africa”. Left with the ultimate decision, Abu Muhammad responded that he would “consider the matter”.
Ten days or so after Abu Muhammad’s return to Khartoum, Harun and his family followed suit. “Brother Abu Talal was waiting for me at the airport”, the Comorian recalled. A polyglot Moroccan licensed pilot, Abu Talal al-Maghribi was part of the al-Qa‘ida members who had refused to follow Bin Ladin to Afghanistan in 1996. If the Moroccan had drifted away from the group, he was still living among the Arab-Afghan diaspora in Sudan. There, Abu Talal sheltered Harun and his family in the house he shared with other North African jihadis in Khartoum’s al-Manshiyya neighborhood. Having obtained a visa for Pakistan, the Comorian “was certain” that he would soon be living in the Taliban emirate.
By then, however, Abu Muhammad had opted to follow Abu Hafs’ suggestion regarding the Comorian and broaden the East Africa cell. During a one-on-one meeting, Abu Muhammad revealed to Harun the true reason for his recent arrival from Afghanistan: Abu Hafs “had sent him on a special mission, namely striking the Americans” in Kenya. Further, he added, Abu Hafs had recommended that Harun be part of the plot. If the Comorian were to refuse the assignment, he ought to “forget about the matter as if he had never heard anything” and proceed to Afghanistan. The proposal coming from Abu Hafs and Abu Muhammad being highly regarded by Harun, the latter accepted the mission outright. “Never tell anyone about our work, we do not want anyone to know about our intentions”, Abu Muhammad instructed. The cover story they agreed upon was that, instead of Afghanistan, the Comorian was actually “going back to Somalia for training”.
If Abu Muhammad’s Sudanese sojourn enabled him to recruit new talents, security concerns came to derail his plans in Yemen. “Everything was ready for the journey”, according to Abu Muhammad, who informed his point of contact there that he was about to move. Shortly before leaving Sudan, however, the point of contact called to inform him that an Egyptian jihadi had just been arrested at Sanaa airport using an altered passport similar to the one Abu Muhammad had obtained through Talha. Fearing that the same fate was awaiting Abu Muhammad, his point of contact advised him not to move. Consequently, Abu Muhammad “postponed” his travel plans, essentially putting on hold his overseeing of the Yemen plot.
Reconnaissance and Logistics
Around late November, Abu Muhammad and Harun left Khartoum carrying with them a “substantial amount of U.S. dollars” to bankroll the East Africa cell. Once in Nairobi, they booked a hotel in Eastleigh, where they began to discuss their “work program”. “By then, I had resolved myself not to leave Kenya until the completion of the operation”, Abu Muhammad said, considering that “direct supervision” was “the best way to manage operations”. Over the coming months, Abu Muhammad and Harun would primarily focus on scouting and selecting future targets. Their motto: “if you strike, strike hard”.
The first of these reconnaissance missions started even before the two set foot in Nairobi, albeit in an informal manner. While waiting at the hall of Khartoum airport, the two noticed a large gathering of Sudanese Sufi Shaykhs accompanied by their “disciples”. “Curiosity prompted me to assign brother Harun with the first reconnaissance mission”, Abu Muhammad remembered. Harun then approached one of the Sufi “disciples” to ask him about the reason behind this large gathering and was told that the Shaykhs were en route to attend a major annual Sufi conference in Senegal.
After this initial training excercise, Abu Muhammad and Harun did their first real casing in Kenya’s capital. Again, this was improvised by the Egyptian. “While in Nairobi”, he recalled, “I noticed a large building to my right. The presence of guards, iron and concrete barricades caught my attention”. Much to his surprise, he learned from Harun that the edifice was the American embassy. “This is an opportunity not to be missed”, the Egyptian said, adding, “if we can breach these iron and concrete barriers, we can access its premises”. Capitalizing on the number of pedestrians in the area where the embassy was located, Abu Muhammad and Harun circled around the building to identify its “weak points” and determine “the easiest ways to breach it”.
This led Abu Muhammad to consider multiple operational scenarios. Operatives could launch a commando-type attack where they would storm and take control of the edifice. They could also kidnap some of the embassy staff or follow them outside the building to assassinate them. After estimating the number of employees working at the embassy, Abu Muhammad and Harun assessed that the total of casualties for an attack could be “in the hundreds”.
If Abu Muhammad and Harun reconnoitered the U.S. embassy as soon as they landed in Kenya in late 1997, striking the building was not part of their initial plans. At the time, Abu Muhammad was envisaging it only as “a potential target for the [al-Qa‘ida] organization in the future”. After this “preliminary and quick” scouting, the Egyptian stated that he intended to conduct a more “thorough reconnaissance in the future, before our departure from Kenya, so that it would be a ready project for the [al-Qa‘ida] leadership when it is presented to them”. This is further reflected by the brevity of his stay in Nairobi with Harun: after two days or so, the pair left the city, and would only return months later.
In reality, the original plot devised by al-Qa‘ida’s East Africa cell was to strike the U.S. in Mombasa. As Abu Muhammad related, he and Harun’s “main objective” in Nairobi was to purchase the necessary supplies to move to Mombasa. After spending December 1997 at a “small hotel” in downtown Mombasa, Abu Muhammad tasked Harun with searching for a “suitable house” to rent. In January 1998, the Comorian, thanks to his local relations, managed to find a new home, a third-floor apartment in the city’s Old Town directly overlooking the oldest Shi‘a Ismaili Center in Kenya.
In his book, Abu Muhammad never revealed the specific target of his cell in Mombasa. “I did not mention that target, perhaps it will be a future project, God willing”, he explained. While the Egyptian remained evasive, his Comorian deputy was more prolix on the topic. When he was first pitched by Abu Muhammad in Sudan, Harun recounted, he was told that the project consisted in “striking the Americans at the port of Mombasa”. If the port was their original target, Abu Muhammad and Harun did not content themselves with scouting the site. The duo was also interested in Mombasa’s “numerous entertainment venues and bars” frequented by U.S. troops returning from Iraq. According to Harun, he and Abu Muhammad used to roam in the city “to collect the maximum amount of information” on multiple locations. At the time, Abu Muhammad registered as a Yemeni student in a language institute, supposedly to learn Swahili. In reality, he would go there every morning to monitor potential targets located nearby.
After meticulous reconnaissance “on more than one objective”, Harun stated, Abu Muhammad decided that the port of Mombasa and the city’s “entertainment venues” frequented by U.S. soldiers would be the cell’s primary and secondary targets, respectively.
While Abu Muhammad and Harun were busy casing and selecting targets, Fahd was undertaking the “preparation process”. After Somalia was ruled out as a place to acquire explosive materials, Abu Muhammad said that Fahd quickly came up with a new yet risky way to achieve this goal. “The slightest suspicion from the seller could lead to serious consequences”, Abu Muhammad maintained.
If the Egyptian did not give further details, it appears that the alternative found by Fahd was to source explosive materials in Tanzania. According to Harun, the Kenyan was assisted in this task by his comrade ‘Isa al-Tanzani, a young Zanzibarian who was part of “the youth” from the region trained and recruited in the mid-1990s by al-Qa‘ida for its activities in East Africa, especially Somalia. To obtain TNT, the latter managed to convince “some companies” that “he was interested in fishing and drilling”. With the pick-up truck he had just acquired for the plot – “the most common vehicle in the streets of Mombasa” according to Abu Muhammad -, Fahd would transport the explosives across the border to Mombasa before storing them in a warehouse.
“The wheel of work began to rotate very quickly”, Abu Muhammad narrated, adding that “every day, I felt remarkable progress [in the plot]”. With Fahd intensifying his efforts, the cell rapidly doubled its amount of TNT and detonating fuses. Handling numerous travels between Tanzania and Mombasa all by himself, Fahd ended up exhausted. Consequently, the Kenyan came to Abu Muhammad to ask him to enlist the help of his longtime friend Abu Yahya al-Kini so that the two could share the workload, allowing Fahd to take some rest between two trips. Like Fahd, Abu Yahya grew up in Mombasa as a Salafi before participating in al-Qa‘ida’s efforts in Somalia in the mid-1990s, except that he had never gone to Afghanistan.
After further inquiry, Abu Muhammad agreed to recruit Abu Yahya. Besides being viewed by his superiors as “one of the best brothers here”, the young Kenyan managed a truck company and had “extensive experience in long travels”. Having formally pledged to obey “all orders issued to him”, Abu Yahya was then established as the East Africa cell’s “fifth element”, according to Abu Muhammad. The cell could now use two vehicles, instead of one, to move between Kenya and Tanzania to stockpile explosives.
Complementing each other, Fahd and Abu Yahya worked fast, to the point that, by March 1998 or so, “there was little left to complete the preparation process”, Abu Muhammad said. The cell, he continued, had amassed so much explosives that “if every vehicle [for the attacks] required a hundred kilos of TNT … then we had many times that amount [in our possession]”. The cell had even conducted drill exercises in Mombasa, parking cars at the locations they intended to strike. At the time though, the vehicles were not carrying explosives, as the operatives were waiting for the day of the operations to do so.
Change of Plans
As the cell was finalizing the “preparation process”, Abu Muhammad and Harun expanded the geographical area of their reconnaissance missions. Their destination: Tanzania. This had been in the works for quite some time. “I had obtained a visa for Tanzania a while back, but the workload had prevented me from traveling [there]”, Abu Muhammad said. On the latter’s schedule was scouting the U.S. embassy in Dar-es-Salaam. Lobbying his leader to go exploring the location, Harun used to tell him that he “would be fascinated by it if [he] saw it”. The Comorian viewed the U.S. embassy as an attractive target. According to his information, the building previously belonged to Israel, which had left it to the Americans over security concerns, as the Palestine Liberation Organization had established an office in the city. Further, the building was situated in “an isolated location” together with the French, German, Egyptian and several other embassies.
Given that the plot had now progressed well, Abu Muhammad, accompanied by Harun, took a trip overland to Tanzania’s capital. Benefiting from the passage of a street vendor in front of the U.S. embassy, the duo took their time to observe the building. “Abu Muhammad was impressed with its location”, Harun remembered. Indeed, they noticed that the site had “a significant security lapse”: approaching the target would not even require an elaborate “plan”, Abu Muhammad concluded. The embassy was not Abu Muhammad’s only plan in Tanzania. While spending time in Dar-es-Salaam’s diplomatic quarters, the pair collected some “very valuable information about this beautiful, quiet neighborhood”, the Egyptian wrote. He and Harun then traveled to the city of Arusha, where they also “gathered significant information useful for [our] work”, before returning to Dar-es-Salaam to conduct a more comprehensive reconnaissance of the U.S. embassy.
Similar to the Nairobi casing, however, the embassy and various locations scouted by the pair in Tanzania were not part of the cell’s immediate action plan and were only viewed as potential targets for later times. After less than a week in Tanzania, “we decided to return to Mombasa to continue our original work”, Abu Muhammad recounted.
Upon their return, the duo received news from Pakistan: “the Engineer” was on his way to Kenya. Before his trip to Tanzania, given that the “preparation process” was nearly complete, Abu Muhammad had sent a request to “the brothers in Afghanistan” asking them to send a specialist in “car bombing”. Then living at al-Qa‘ida’s Tarnak Farms in Kandahar, Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Muhajir was selected for the job. At the time, Abu Muhammad said, this senior Egyptian cadre with experience in Afghanistan and Somalia was viewed as among the group’s “most prominent explosives experts, especially in car bombing operations”. Arriving in Kenya around March 1998, al-Muhajir settled in Mombasa, where he lived together with Abu Muhammad and Harun.
From the outset, operational security matters had been preoccupying the East Africa cell. Keen on maintaining the utmost secrecy around the plot, Abu Muhammad kept all the other al-Qa‘ida members in the region in the dark. “Everyone thought that I had come [to Africa] to continue working [on al-Qa‘ida’s affairs] in Somalia”, he contended. His months-long presence in Kenya, however, ended up raising questions within al-Qa‘ida’s East Africa cadre. “Brother Mustafa was surprised that Abu Muhammad was present throughout this period”, Harun noticed.
The presence of the Comorian was even more problematic. Indeed, his colleagues viewed him as a security liability and knew that he was supposed to move to Afghanistan. To avoid suspicion regarding Harun’s unexpected return to Kenya and prevent any backlash, Abu Muhammad told the East Africa cadre that the Comorian had been assigned to “some administrative affairs” and would no longer be involved in the organization’s “Somalia file”. As for Fahd, who was not too happy with Harun’s comeback, he was instructed by Abu Muhammad to get along with the Comorian and cooperate with him for the sake of the operations.
Now that al-Muhajir was in Mombasa, suspicions grew further. With his arrival, “all the youth began to suspect that something was going on”, Harun recounted. As “the youth” were trying “to extract information from Fahd”, he continued, “we warned him not to say anything to anyone and just say that he was going to Tanzania for business”.
These security concerns extended to communications from Afghanistan as, according to Harun, the cell “did not want Shaykh Abu Hafs to contact us at all” for safety reasons. However, it still managed to send messages to keep al-Qa‘ida’s leadership informed and request support for the operations, as illustrated by the dispatch from Afghanistan of “the Engineer”, al-Muhajir.
By the time the latter arrived, “I was longing for news from the brothers in Afghanistan”, Abu Muhammad recalled, especially given that “the Engineer” had been taking care of Abu Muhammad’s family in Kandahar since late 1997. In their Mombasa home, aside from discussing al-Qa‘ida’s most recent activities in Afghanistan, the trio also talked extensively about operational planning, with al-Muhajir being briefed about the cell’s equipment. “We are ready for execution at any moment”, Abu Muhammad told him, adding, “we have to prepare the vehicles and place them in the pre-selected locations”.
Keen on inspecting the explosives stockpiled by Fahd and Abu Yahya, “the Engineer” was taken by the two Kenyan friends to the cell’s storage facility. “This is great! I did not expect to have such quantities”, he said excitedly after seeing the materials, adding that the latter were “excellent”. Al-Muhajir had another request for Abu Muhammad: conducting a test to make sure that the detonators they had were working. “You are joking!!!”, Abu Muhammad exclaimed, “How can we do a test here? We are not in the camps of Afghanistan, Yemen or Somalia”. After much insistence from al-Muhajir, Abu Muhammad granted the request, allowing “the Engineer” to test an improvised explosives device on Mombasa’s beach. “It was very successful, with no sound or flash”, Abu Muhammad wrote, adding that he still considered that test as a “mistake” as it could have jeopardized the whole operation.
By March-April, the East Africa cell had completed the planning for the anti-U.S. attacks in Mombasa. “A very simple thing remained, namely the target”, Abu Muhammad related. Indeed, despite “constant reconnaissance” in the city, he continued, “the desired target had not come yet”. In his autobiography, Harun was more specific about the issue. The “American soldiers” freshly arriving from Iraq that the cell was eagerly waiting for had yet to land at the city’s port. The waiting caused a general sense of concern among the operatives, who feared that too much delay might end up with one of them being arrested by Kenyan authorities. The “recurring question” asked to Abu Muhammad was about the next course of action if the Americans did not come to Mombasa. To “reassure” his men, the Egyptian used to tell them that he had a backup plan. “None of them, even brother Harun, imagined that I would decide to change the entire operation”, Abu Muhammad stated. Eventually, the latter determined that if the Americans failed to show up within the next seven days, he would cancel the Mombasa operations.
After a week, Harun contended, “we realized that the American soldiers would not come this year due to the high number of operations in Iraq and the strict security measures imposed by their country”. As a result, Abu Muhammad announced to his men the “very difficult” decision he had taken, namely “to shift the entire operation” from Mombasa to a location “far from our place of residence”. “We are going to strike a CIA center”, Abu Muhammad told them, before revealing the new target: “the U.S. embassy in Nairobi”.