Fazul Abdullah Mohammed - War On Terror

War On Terror

Mohammed is suspected in Kenya of involvement in two attacks in Mombasa on November 26, 2002. One was the truck bombing of Paradise Hotel, in which 15 were killed. The other was the launch of two shoulder-fired missiles at an Israeli airliner on takeoff; the missiles missed and there were no casualties.

On May 26, 2004, United States Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller announced that reports indicated that Mohammed was one of seven al-Qaeda members who were planning a terrorist action for the summer or fall of 2004. American Democrats labeled the warning "suspicious" and said it was held solely to divert attention from President Bush's declining poll numbers and to push the failings of the 2003 invasion of Iraq off the front page. CSIS director Reid Morden voiced similar concerns, saying it seemed more like "election year" politics, than an actual threat. The New York Times pointed out that one day before the announcement, they had been told by the Department of Homeland Security that there were no current risks.

According to an FBI interrogation report, an associate of Mohammed confessed that the militant trained with al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Ahmed Ghailani, also on that list, was captured in Pakistan a month later. Soon thereafter, several press reports, claiming UN and official US sources, described the participation of several al-Qaeda personnel, including Mohammed and Ghailani, in the acquisition and movement of diamonds in Liberia.

When the ferry MV Bukoba sank in Lake Victoria in 1996, taking al-Qaeda co-founder Abu Ubaidah al-Banshiri with it, Mohammed was one of the individuals sent to the scene by al-Qaeda, attempting to verify that Abu Ubaidah was dead, and had not in fact defected.