"Tribe and Brogan came to know Idris during litigation that followed the 1991 collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. Saudi Sheik Khalid bin Mahfouz, then Idris' boss, was implicated in the BCCI money-laundering scandal and eventually paid more than $200 million to escape possible U.S. charges stemming from the bank's implosion."
SOME OF THE MUKHABARAT’S FILES IDENTIFY INDIVIDUALS who played central roles in the bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in August 1998; others chart the backgrounds and movements of al-Qaeda operatives who are said to be linked directly to the atrocities of September 11. Among those profiled:
Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, another of those named on the F.B.I.’s most-wanted list, who set the plot for the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings rolling during two trips he made to Nairobi in the spring of 1998 from Khartoum, where he was apparently working for al-Qaeda. Rose writes that had the F.B.I. accepted al-Mahdi’s February offer, it might have foiled Mohammed’s plans by stepping in when he rented a villa in Kenya, gathered the bombers at the Hilltop Hotel in Nairobi, or helped stuff a pickup truck with TNT.
Two men carrying Pakistani passports and using the names Sayyid Iskandar Suliman and Sayyid Nazir Abbass, who arrived in Khartoum from Kenya a few days after the 1998 embassy bombings and rented an apartment overlooking the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum. They appeared to be reconnoitering for a possible future attack and are believed to be members of al-Qaeda. They also stayed at the Hilltop Hotel in Nairobi—the base used by other members of the embassy-bombing conspiracy. Sudan arrested the two men and offered to extradite them for trial, but the U.S. did not respond, instead opting to bomb the al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, which was found to have no connection to bin Laden but made vaccines and medicine and had contracts with the U.N.