Mohammed Saddiq Odeh (born 1 March 1965)[1] is a Saudi-born al-Qaeda member, sentenced in October 2001 to life imprisonment for his parts in the US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7, 1998. Odeh was convicted along with three co-conspirators: Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-Owhali, Khalfan Khamis Mohamed and Wadih el Hage. Another defendant, Ali Mohamed, pleaded guilty the previous year. Another, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, was awaiting trial, and three additional defendants were fighting extradition in England.[3]
| Mohammed Saddiq Odeh | |
|---|---|
 Odeh being transported to United States from Kenya, 1998 | |
| Born | 1 March 1965[1] Tabouk, Saudi Arabia |
| Arrested | 1998 Karachi, Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence and FBI |
| Citizenship | Jordanian and Kenyan |
| Detained at | United States Penitentiary, Coleman I, Florida[2] |
| Other name(s) | Khalid Salim |
| ISN | 42375-054 |
| Alleged to be a member of | al-Qaeda |
| Charge(s) | 1998 US embassy attacks |
| Penalty | life imprisonment (2001) |
| Status | in prison |
| Spouse | Nassem Nassor born August 15, 1969 [1] |
| Children | Yasser Boy |
He is currently imprisoned in the United States Penitentiary in Coleman, Florida.
Activities
editIn March 1993, Saif al-Adel ordered Odeh to Somalia to train tribes in fighting.[4] He has been accused of training forces loyal to warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid in 1993, while other sources have suggested he was training Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya members.[5][6] The following year he was sent to Mombasa, Kenya with money from Mohammed Atef to purchase himself a 7-tonne trawler and start a fishing business.[7]
An engineer with both Kenyan and Jordanian citizenship, Odeh was arrested in Karachi, Pakistan after a flight from Nairobi to Karachi using a forged Yemeni passport, with a photograph that clearly did not match his face,[5] supplied to him by Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah. Odeh was interrogated by Pakistan’s ISI agents because he listed his flight destination as "Afghanistan", and he confessed to his role in the bombings, claiming that seven men had plotted them together.
A week later he was returned to Nairobi, where he was taken into custody by the FBI. The FBI interrogated him from 15–27 August 1998, and FBI's Special Agent Daniel Coleman confirmed that he had accepted responsibility for the bombing.[8][9][10]
References
edit- ^ a b c http://americanjihadists.com/1998-08-31-FBI-FD302-Odeh-all.pdf [dead link]
- ^ Inmate Locator, Federal Bureau of Prisons: Mohamed Siddiq Odeh #42375-054
- ^ Four embassy bombers get life, CNN.com, By Phil Hirschkorn, October 21, 2001
- ^ Bergen, Peter, "The Osama bin Laden I Know', 2006.
- ^ a b Benjamin, Daniel & Steven Simon. "The Age of Sacred Terror", 2002
- ^ Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), Security Intelligence Report concerning Mohamed Harkat, February 22, 2008
- ^ Simon Reeve, The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the future of terrorism, London: Deutsch Limited, 1999, p. 4
- ^ Woman speaks out 15 years after her husband’s Mohammed Odeh arrest
- ^ About FBI’s Special Agent Daniel Coleman
- ^ Katz, Samuel M. "Relentless Pursuit: The DSS and the manhunt for the al-Qaeda terrorists", 2002
External links
edit- Copy of indictment USA v. Usama bin Laden et al., Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies at the Library of Congress Web Archives (archived 2001-11-10)
- Four embassy bombers get life, CNN.com, By Phil Hirschkorn, October 21, 2001