OWN CORRESPONDENT, Nairobi | Monday 11.00PM.
AFTER three days of questioning, a suspect flown into Nairobi, Kenya, from Pakistan in connection with the Nairobi bombing on August 7 has not admitted any role in the crime or implicated anyone else, the FBI said on Monday.
The man, Mohammed Saddiq Odeh, also known as Abdull Bast Awadh and Mohammad Sadiq Howaida, was flown to Nairobi from Pakistan after reportedly confessing to a part in the bombing and naming his co-conspirators. The reports linked Saddiq to renegade Saudi multi-millionaire Osama bin Laden, at present living in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taleban militia, and whom the United States says is one of the world’s major sponsors of terrorism.
Saddiq was arrested in Karachi after arriving on a flight from Nairobi on August 7, the day of the blasts in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which killed 257 people and injured more than 5,500.
He reportedly told investigators in Pakistan that six co-conspirators had slipped through the Karachi airport August 7 and made it to Afghanistan.
However, the FBI and Kenyan police said in a joint statement: “Mr Saddiq Odeh has not admitted any responsibility in the bombings in Nairobi or Dar es Salaam, nor has he implicated anyone else in those events.”
A Kenyan newspaper has reported that FBI agents brought a second suspect back to Nairobi, also on Friday. It said the suspect was arrested in the United Arab Emirates. Spokesmen for the US Embassy in Nairobi and Kenyan police both declined comment.
Kenyan officials are meanwhile expected to raise the issue of victim compensation and aid for reconstruction when US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright meets them on Tuesday to discuss the bombing.