FBI Director Cites Links in Bombings

NAIROBI, Kenya —  The day after the U.S. cruise missile strikes against suspected terrorist targets in Sudan and Afghanistan, FBI Director Louis J. Freeh said Friday that agents and East African police are still very much in the business of building a case against the perpetrators of the Aug. 7 bombings of the U.S. embassies here and in Tanzania.

Cutting short his trip to Africa in the wake of the missile strikes, Freeh said the investigation into the bombings had produced “new developments in just the past few days.” Speaking over the whine of his blue-and-white U.S. government jet on the tarmac at the Nairobi airport, he cited “forensic similarities” between the nearly simultaneous bomb blasts in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.

He declined to elaborate--or to provide examples of other developments in what he called a “very broad and very fast-moving” investigation. Asked repeatedly, he also declined to say whether Thursday’s missile attacks were based on evidence gathered on the ground in East Africa.

The Aug. 7 car bombs in the two capitals killed more than 260 people and injured more than 5,000. Among the dead were 12 Americans.

President Clinton said he ordered Thursday’s strikes after weighing “convincing information” that those targeted by the missiles had played key roles in organizing the bomb attacks in Kenya and Tanzania.

Freeh declined to say whether FBI agents or police in Kenya or Tanzania had unearthed evidence specifically tying dissident Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden to the embassy attacks. Bin Laden has denied involvement in the bombings.

“To go into the details of the investigation . . . is something that investigators and prosecutors don’t do,” Freeh said.

He also said he could not predict how long the investigation might take. “We have a lot more work to do,” he said. But he added that the probe was “progressing very well.”

FBI agents and Kenyan police raided the Nairobi offices of an Irish charity, the Mercy International relief agency, in connection with the bombing, hauling away documents and computers, an employee said Friday.

“Even now, they didn’t give us any details of why they came here,” Abdalla Ahmed, who runs the office’s computers, said Friday, the day after the raid.

Ahmed said that another employee, Shaban Hassan, remained in police custody Friday. He said he did not know why.

Freeh declined to say how many people were in custody in connection with the bombing investigation.

Among those in Kenyan custody is Mohammed Sadik Howaida, a Palestinian detained Aug. 7 by Pakistani authorities at the Karachi airport. He has since been extradited to Kenya, and Pakistani officials have said he has confessed to involvement in the bombings.

On Monday, however, U.S. and Kenyan investigators issued a statement in Nairobi that said Howaida--also known as Mohammed Sadik Odeh--had confessed to nothing. Asked about that statement on Friday, Sheila Horan, the FBI agent in charge in Nairobi, said, “I would confirm that again.”

Freeh said of Howaida: “From my point of view, again, as the criminal investigator, we are very interested in speaking to him and continuing to speak to him.”

During his few hours in Nairobi, the FBI director twice toured the wreckage of the embassy and surrounding buildings--once Thursday night, again Friday morning. He said he “wanted to make my own assessment.”

Freeh spent most of Thursday in Dar es Salaam, visiting the blast site there and meeting with FBI agents and local officials.