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Witness Says Bin Laden Tried To Buy Uranium
NEW YORK, Feb 7 (News Agencies) - Osama bin Laden tried in the 1990s to buy uranium, possibly to make a weapon, a defector from his group testified Wednesday in the trial of four men accused in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.
Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl said he had served as the intermediary in the transaction between bin Laden, then in Sudan, and a seller he identified only as "Bashir," who demanded $1.5 million for a cylinder of uranium about one meter long.
Al-Fadl said he did not know if bin Laden successfully completed the purchase.
Prosecutors have called the 34-year-old Sudanese national, who defected from bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization and sought protection from the U.S. government, to help bolster their case that bin Laden masterminded the near-simultaneous 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which left 224 people dead, 12 of them Americans.
U.S. authorities have expressed numerous concerns over the past few years that a group was trying to obtain material to build a nuclear bomb. Al-Fadl's testimony offered details of the effort by bin Laden, a sworn enemy of the United States.
Al-Fadl said that while the organization was based in Khartoum from 1991 to 1996, he was assigned to the effort by an al-Qaeda leader known by the pseudonym Abu Fadl al Makkee,. He said he did not remember the exact date.
"Al Makkee told me: 'People in Khartoum have uranium. We need to buy that,' " al-Fadl said.
At a meeting in Bait al Man, a city north of Khartoum, al-Fadl was able to examine the merchandise, he said.
"There were documents about the origin of it: South Africa, serial numbers and things about quality," al-Fadl said. "The machine to test the cylinder would come from Kenya."
It was during the period al-Qaeda was in Sudan that al-Fadl, a slightly-built man with a closely-cropped beard, left the group and offered to provide U.S. authorities with information. His testimony is expected to last through Thursday.
The four suspects on trial here since Monday have pleaded innocent. All are believed to be members of al-Qaeda.
If convicted, two of the accused - Saudi national Mohamed Rashid Daoud Al Owhali, 23, and Tanzanian Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, 27 - could face the death penalty.
The remaining two - Lebanese-American Wadih El Hage, 40, and Jordanian Mohamed Saddiq Odeh, 35 - face life in prison.
Bin Laden is one of 14 people charged in the bombings who remain at large. The Saudi millionaire lives in exile in Afghanistan under the protection of the ruling Taliban militia, despite a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture.
One man suspected in the plot has pleaded guilty. Three others are in Britain awaiting extradition.
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