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Until he ratted to the Americans, Al-Fadl loyally carried out orders to manage al Qaeda front businesses in Sudan, study the terror tradecraft of explosives and disguises, and reach out to useful allies. On the stand, he has drawn a fine-lined portrait, spilling names of operatives and dissecting operational methods. He said his job included setting up the Sudan farms where many recruits were trained and overseeing the businesses that financed them. Al-Fadl said he was privy to the inner councils of al Qaeda that set policy, bought weapons, issued Islamic decrees and financed terrorist attacks. He described how Kalashnikov rifles were smuggled to Egypt's Al Jihad in camel caravans and a shipment of explosives was delivered by boat to a group in Yemen and guarded by Sudanese intelligence. He told how suicide bombers were taught to shave their beards, don Levi's and leave their Korans at home to allay suspicion when they set off on an assignment--exactly what one of the men on trial confessed he had done in 1998.
And Al-Fadl offered chilling insight into bin Laden's grand plans. In late 1993, the witness testified, he tried to buy $1.5 million worth of uranium for al Qaeda, but he didn't know whether the stuff packed inside a 2-ft. cylinder he was shown was the real thing. Though Washington suspects the offer was bogus, Al-Fadl got a $10,000 "good job" bonus anyway.
A taste for money was to prove his downfall. Irate that his privileged position did not pay more, Al-Fadl siphoned $110,000 in kickbacks from the organization's funds to buy himself land and a car. When bin Laden confronted him, said Al-Fadl, he offered forgiveness if all the money was returned. But unable to restore the funds, Al-Fadl fled. Since then he has pleaded guilty to charges of terrorist conspiracy in a secret proceeding, and faces up to 15 years in prison--unless his loquacity in New York earns him leniency.
Al-Fadl's testimony has given the New York federal jury a basic grasp of bin Laden's operations, but Al-Fadl left the group two years before the embassy bombings. The trial defendants, two of whom face a possible death sentence, can expect to hear more damaging accusations from Ali Mohamed, the Egyptian-born, naturalized U.S. citizen who signed on with bin Laden shortly after his discharge from the U.S. Army in 1989. Once an instructor in Middle East warfare at Fort Bragg, Mohamed shifted his teaching talents to the paramilitary operations of al Qaeda. He trained bin Laden's personal-security guards and later helped set up the cell in Nairobi that eventually carried out the bombing. He has already pleaded guilty to terrorism conspiracy for his role.