Wadih El-Hage - Arrest

Arrest

The Nairobi house was raided on August 21, 1998. El-Hage's address book, captured at the time, contained the following names:

• Ali Mohamed, the al-Qaeda double agent living in California.
• Essam Marzouk
• Mamoun Darkazanli, Syrian-born businessman living in Hamburg, Germany, who had contacts with Mohamed Atta’s al-Qaeda cell in the same city. Darkazanli’s name and phone number are listed, and el-Hage even has a business card listing el-Hage’s address in Texas and Darkazanli’s address in Hamburg.
• Ghassan Dahduli, an associate of el-Hage's from Tucson, AZ. Dahduli was affiliated with the Illinois-based Islamic Association for Palestine, suspect at one time of being a Hamas front organization, and the commercial web-hosting service InfoCom Corporation which would later be raided by the US Joint Terrorism Task Force. Though Dahduli himself is apparently quite innocuous, the INS would have him deported to Jordan in late 2001.
• Saleh Abdul Aziz Al Rajhi, a brother of Saudi billionaire Sulaiman Abdul Aziz Al Rajhi who founded of a Herndon, VA-based network of charities and businesses known as the SAAR Foundation.
• Ihab Ali Nawawi, American cab driver who worked as a pilot for Bin Laden.

El-Hage himself was questioned two days later upon his return to Nairobi from Afghanistan. El-Hage's family says that he was told to leave Kenya. In September 1997 he returned to Arlington with his family; several accounts say that he sold all of his possessions to fund the trip. However, upon arriving in the United States, he was arrested on September 15, 1998.

Before a Grand Jury, el-Hage denied knowing bin Laden and others accused of the embassy bombings. On 20 September he was arrested for perjury, and has not been free since. The indictment for the bombings themselves was read on 7 October of that year.