4 Sentenced to Life in Prison for Roles in Embassy Bombings
By BENJAMIN WEISER
our terrorists who were convicted in May of conspiring with Osama bin Laden in the 1998 bombings of two American Embassies in East Africa were sentenced yesterday to life in prison without any chance of release.
Judge Leonard B. Sand sentenced the four men in a packed courtroom under extraordinarily tight security in Old Federal Courthouse in Lower Manhattan, just a short distance from the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center.
It was just five weeks ago that the twin towers and the Pentagon were attacked by terrorists in an operation that the United States government suspects was masterminded by Mr. bin Laden, who is the target of American military action in Afghanistan.
Two of the terrorists spoke in court yesterday, making clear they felt they were innocent. The judge reacted with pointed commentary but little emotion.
"This is a time not for eloquence, but for justice," Judge Sand said.
None of the four terrorists testified in the trial, and the formal public statements made by the two men yesterday were their first since the attacks in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on Aug. 7, 1998, which killed 224 people and wounded thousands.
Wadih El-Hage, 41, a naturalized American citizen from Lebanon and a former close aide to Mr. bin Laden, told Judge Sand that he condemned the African bombings in 1998 as well as the attacks on the trade center and the Pentagon last month.
"The killing of innocent people and noncombatants is radical, extreme and cannot be tolerated by any religion, principles, beliefs or values," said Mr. El-Hage, who, like the other three men, sat with his hands and legs shackled beneath the defense table.
But after he went on to describe his life in the United States, gaining citizenship, building a family, and trying to live as a devout Muslim, an indignant prosecutor rose and accused Mr. El-Hage of coming to court "with no remorse, no shame and no conscience."
"He had a choice," the prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, declared, "and he chose to go with those who would kill rather than to help himself, his family, his country."
Other than the exchange between Mr. El-Hage and Mr. Fitzgerald, the proceedings were relatively subdued. Given the heightened tensions of recent weeks and fears of more terrorist attacks, the courthouse had prepared for the worst. The building resembled a military base, with federal marshals carrying shotguns, public entrances closed and the screening of visitors increased.
The hearing was notable for the unexpected presence of three jurors, who watched from the last row of the courtroom as the men they had convicted months earlier were sentenced. The jurors had been kept anonymous, another security precaution.
But yesterday, two of the visiting jurors agreed to speak with reporters afterward, saying they felt compelled to attend the proceeding after the Sept. 11 attacks. Both jurors spoke on the condition that they remain anonymous.
"I had originally had no intention of coming," said one, an accountant. "I thought we did our jobs to the best of our ability. But on Sept. 11, it became crucial that I come down here to put some kind closure on it."
In a wide-ranging discussion, the jurors also revealed that they came closer than was previously known to imposing the death penalty on two of the terrorists, Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-'Owhali, 24, who helped deliver the bomb that destroyed the embassy in Nairobi, and Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, 28, who helped grind the TNT used in the bomb in Dar es Salaam.
The vote was 9 to 3 in favor of execution, the jurors said, but the three holdouts meant a deadlock, which resulted in automatic life sentences for the men. But, the jurors said, there was never any doubt about the guilt of all four defendants.
Yesterday, there was also no doubt about what sentences Judge Sand was going to impose: the two men who avoided the death penalty could receive nothing less than life sentences. Judge Sand had signaled earlier this week that he had no sympathy for the other two men, who had argued for lesser terms.
The other terrorist who spoke in court, Mohammed Saddiq Odeh, a 36- year-old Jordanian who helped in the preparations for the Nairobi bombing, issued a rambling statement in which he challenged the fairness of his trial. He also criticized the United States for killing civilians in the retaliatory missile strikes on Afghanistan after the 1998 embassy attacks.
Judge Sand did not seem moved. He said the trial was fair, and he rejected any attempt to pin blame on the United States.
"It is not unusual for perpetrators of horrendous crimes to point to other events or other circumstances to try to deflect the enormity of their own acts," Judge Sand said.
Citing Mr. Odeh's claim that the missiles had killed civilians, the judge added, "That would suggest that your system of values would not allow or condone the killing of innocents. But you know that the crimes for which you have been found guilty involved the killing of innocents."
Judge Sand added: "The law recognizes, and appropriately recognizes, that terrorism which causes the death of innocent persons regardless of whether it is based on sincerely held but terribly misguided views or any other reason is one of the most serious crimes, threats to our society, threats to the society of any civilized nation."
Neither of the two terrorists who spoke in court cited Mr. bin Laden by name, although Mr. El-Hage praised the early role of the Taliban in bringing "peace, security and prosperity" to Afghanistan.
The Taliban rules Afghanistan, and has been offering protection to Mr. bin Laden, who remains an indicted fugitive in the embassy bombings case.
But it was after Mr. El-Hage finished reading his statement, and said he had nothing to apologize for, that Mr. Fitzgerald delivered his stinging attack. He said Mr. El-Hage had betrayed his country, his religion and humanity.
"He claims to be a citizen, but he is not an American. He claims to be a religious man, but he is not a true Muslim," Mr. Fitzgerald said.
"The true Americans, the true Muslims, the true family men, he has seen," said Mr. Fitzgerald, citing the victims of the embassy attacks who testified at the trial, and others who appeared yesterday and told the judge of the devastating impact of the bombings on their lives.
"Those are the people he helped to kill," Mr. Fitzgerald said.
Among the five witnesses who testified yesterday was Howard Kavaler, an American diplomat, who recalled his vain attempts to find the remains of his wife, Prabhi, also a diplomat, buried in the rubble of the embassy in Nairobi.
For three years, he said, he had nightmares of "the clouds of dust, the dangling wires, the invisible cries for help that were muffled by mounds of concrete and twisted steel." The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 had only exacerbated those memories, he said.
He also read a letter to Judge Sand from his 13-year-old daughter Tara, who had written about her mother:
"I miss the time we spent together. I miss that she loved me like no one else could. And I miss her helping me with things that were hard. My heart hurts every day. I hope it will go away. A kid's heart shouldn't hurt every day. A kid shouldn't have to miss her mother every day."
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