5-Year Hunt Fails to Net Qaeda Suspect in Africa

MOMBASA, Kenya A recent urgent terrorism alert in Kenya is the latest frustrating chapter in a five-year international manhunt for one of the world's most wanted Qaeda suspects, American and Kenyan officials say.
The alert was issued in May after the suspect, Fazul Abdullah Muhammad, was sighted in Mombasa. Investigators say he has been an associate of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) since the early 1990's and is the leader of Al Qaeda's operations in East Africa.

The officials said they had been pursuing him sometimes close on his heels since he emerged in the investigation of the bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

What has helped Mr. Muhammad evade capture, Western officials say, is Kenya's porous 420-mile border with Somalia, an anarchic and lawless country where the American presence all but evaporated in the early 90's after a military debacle in which 18 G.I.'s were killed.

"In East Africa, our most serious vulnerability is that we are neighboring the Somali Republic, a land with no government," Dave Mwangi, Kenya's permanent secretary for provincial administration of national security, said in an interview in Nairobi. "As long as Somalia remains that way, people can hide there. We have a long, porous border, which will remain a threat."

One result of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States was an American effort to re-establish some intelligence operations in Somalia. Now, with Mr. Muhammad's suspected use of Somali territory as a hiding place and staging area, Western officials here say, the United States is increasing its involvement, pursuing alliances with competing warlords in an effort to monitor ports and airfields.

Kenyan officials said Mr. Muhammad audaciously returned to Mombasa, formerly his base, in May even though his photograph had been circulated to the police throughout the country and the region. He has been accused in the attack here last November in which suicide bombers rammed an explosives-laden car into the Paradise Hotel, killing 13 people, as well as in an attempt to shoot down an Israeli passenger jet with a shoulder-fired missile.

Shortly before his appearance in Mombasa, Mr. Muhammad was spotted in a mosque in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, according to Kenyan and Western officials.

Since then Western antiterror agents, increasingly convinced that he and several Qaeda associates are using Somalia as a sanctuary and transit point for weapons and explosives, have been working to persuade warlords who control key airfields to produce flight manifests and allow the monitoring of ports.

A contingent of German surveillance planes based in Mombasa is now monitoring ships and communication in international waters along the Somali coast with the aid of Western intelligence agents in Somali ports and in coordination with American forces in Bahrain, according to a German military official. They have been searching for suspect ships, including some identified as having ties to Qaeda business interests and operations, according to the official.

In May, the State Department warned of the "credible threat" of another terrorist attack in Kenya, mentioning the risk of an assault using shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles. After a similar warning from the British government, British Airways and El Al canceled direct international flights to Kenya, a move that has devastated Kenyan tourism.

According to the Kenyan foreign minister, Stephen Musyoka, and an American official, the American Embassy showed Kenyan officials intelligence reports suggesting that suspects had been photographing the flight paths at Nairobi's international airport. The officials also disclosed that suspects had used conspiratorial language in telephone intercepts, mentioning a "wedding," interpreted as code for an imminent attack.

Before the attack in Mombasa in November, Kenyan police officials said, Mr. Muhammad lived quietly under an alias in Siyu, on the Kenyan coast near the Somali border, married to the daughter of a cleric and teaching in an Islamic school. According to his wife's family, who were interviewed by the Kenyan police, Mr. Muhammad has not been back to Siyu since a few weeks after the attack.

He has proved especially elusive, authorities say, because he speaks French, Swahili, Arabic and English fluently and switches between Islamic and Western dress. American officials said they narrowly missed catching him in 1998 in Nairobi, where he remained for a week after the embassy bombings. He then flew to his childhood home in the Comoro Islands. When F.B.I. agents, tipped off by phone calls, flew there to arrest him, they found that he had left a week earlier for Dubai, American officials said at the time.

In March of this year, according to an international security and intelligence official based in East Africa, American agents paid a Somali warlord for the capture in Mogadishu of an associate of Mr. Muhammad, who they hoped might help lead them to him.

The man, who Kenyan officials say was wanted for involvement in the embassy bombings and is now in American custody, is Suleiman Abdalla Salim Hemed, known as Issa. Said to be a Yemeni in his mid-20's, Mr. Hemed is one of a number of suspected Qaeda members whose faces appear on illustrated playing cards being distributed by the American agents in Somalia. The cards are similar to the ones handed out in Iraq (news - web sites) with details and photos of wanted former officials of the government of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), the international official said.

His capture, accomplished with some serendipity after a series of seeming mishaps, illustrates the complex calculations required of operatives in the Mogadishu area.

According to the international official, who has spoken with acquaintances of Mr. Hemed, the young Yemeni first arrived in Mogadishu about two years ago with a conspicuous amount of money. He became part owner in an electronics company, Sabria Electronics, and was reported to have obtained two fiberglass motorboats, which were used to smuggle people and supplies to Kenya. He also worked as a driver, occasionally for United Nations (news - web sites) officials.

The official, who has contact with some of the Somalis now working with American agents, said the team investigating the Mombasa attacks traced telephone calls from suspects in Kenya back to Mr. Hemed. The calls led to a location in a southern district of Mogadishu.

American agents contracted with Muhammad Dheere, a warlord based in Jowhar, north of Mogadishu, to seize Mr. Hemed, the official said. Because the operation took place outside of his territory, Mr. Dheere hired gunmen for the operation from a clan based in the southern Mogadishu district where Mr. Hemed was living.

The operation went awry when the gunmen's heavily armed convoy became ensnared in heavy traffic heading north through Mogadishu and Mr. Hemed fled.

A gunfight ensued and a number of people were wounded, including Mr. Hemed. But he escaped through the intervention of drivers in nearby cars, who the official said believed him to be the victim of a criminal kidnapping, a common occurrence in Somalia.

Mr. Hemed was definitively captured the next day when he went for treatment at a hospital in northern Mogadishu. His mistake was apparently in believing that his captors were from the southern part of the city. Unsuspectingly, he headed for territory friendly to Mr. Dheere.

A spokesman in Washington for the Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites), Mark Mansfield, declined to comment on reports of increased C.I.A. activity in Somalia, or on a C.I.A. role in the capture of Mr. Hemed.

Kenyan officials say Mr. Hemed has provided information relevant to the investigation of the two embassy bombings and to Al Qaeda's operations in East Africa. Some of his information may have contributed to the American and British decisions to post the travel warning in May.

Kenyan officials say Mr. Hemed's information also led to the arrest in May of four people connected with the Mombasa bombing. But one of the most important suspects, Saleh Ali Saleh, remains at large in Mogadishu, the international official said. Mr. Saleh is suspected of having provided the car that the suicide bombers used in the Mombasa hotel attack.

Said to be a Kenyan of Yemeni origin, Mr. Saleh spent four days shortly after the Mombasa attacks in Baidao, a town in southern Somalia, under the protection of a warlord to whom he is related by marriage, according to Kenyan press reports. The official said Mr. Saleh returned to Mogadishu two weeks ago, coming from Dubai.

New York Times