Kenyan and Tanzanian Embassy Bombers Trial: 2001

Within days, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) linked the bombings to Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, leader of a worldwide conspiracy to destroy U.S. government property and kill Americans. Bin Laden and 16 members of his terrorist organization, Al Qaeda, were indicted. Eleven members remained fugitives as four were arrested and brought to trial in Federal District Court in New York City. The trial was held 7,000 miles from the bombed embassies because the conspiracy was alleged to have grown from a Muslim refugee group centered, among other worldwide locations, in Brooklyn. Some of its members had been convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

As the trial opened on February 5, 2001, before Judge Leonard B. Sand, assistant U.S. attorney Paul Butler told the jury of seven women and five men that "all four defendants entered into an illegal agreement with Osama bin Laden and others to kill Americans anywhere in the world. And in the end, 224 men, women, and children lost their lives." The 302-count charge included individual indictments for murder for each death.

Defense attorney Jeremy Schneider, representing Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, conceded his client participated in the bombings but said he was a "pawn" who simply took orders. Attorneys for Mohamed Saddiq Odeh and Wadih El-Hage admitted their clients' ties to bin Laden but denied any violent activity. Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-'Owhali's attorney, Frederick H. Cohn, offered no opening statement.