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American Morning

Embassy Bombings Trial: Sentencing Phase Begins

Aired May 30, 2001 - 10:04   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
STEPHEN FRAZIER, CNN ANCHOR: We turn our attention now to New York City and the embassy bombings trial that took place there. Prosecutors today will seek the death penalty for two of four men convicted yesterday in connection with the bombings in Tanzania and Kenya. Their two codefendants could face life in prison.

CNN national correspondent Bob Franken is standing by in New York with the latest on all this -- Bob, good morning again.

BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Stephen.

And it has just begun. Prosecutors will spend about a half hour arguing that this is a classic case, given the number of people who were killed, in which the dealt penalty should be applied. This follows the complete victory for the prosecution yesterday. All 576 charges in the 302-count indictment received guilty verdicts from the jurors of the four defendants.

Now, the two who included guilty verdicts, in the death penalty phase are going to find out if in fact they will face a sentence of execution. Actually, there will be two different death penalty trials. The first one is occurring right now. That is the one that involves Mohamed al-'Owhali. He is the defendant who is accused of direct participation in the bombing of the Nairobi, Kenya embassy.

That death-penalty-phase trial could actually take as much as two weeks, most of it dominated by testimony from victims of that bombing and members of the families of those who were killed in the bombing. There will be a second death penalty trial. That is with K.K. Mohamed. He is charged with directly participating in the bombing in Dar es Salaam.

Now, let's review the actual events of August 7, 1998, when in Nairobi, Kenya, 10:30 in the morning in downtown at the U.S. Embassy, a massive explosion killed 213, 12 of them U.S. citizens. Another 4,000-plus were injured. Many of those are among those will be testifying here -- ten minutes later, in another part of East Africa, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, a second explosion.

There, the embassy was located on the outskirts of down. There, 11 died. That is the one that will be the second phase of the death penalty hearing. But the focus now is on Nairobi. The focus has been along on the participation of Osama bin Laden. All of the people involved in this, according to the prosecutors in their indictment, were members of bin Laden's organization, an organization, the charge goes, that is dedicated to killing Americans, to resisting the United States. Bin laden himself was one of 22 named in the indictment. But there were four defendants. Now the focus is on the two defendants who face the possibility of being executed for their participation -- Stephen.

FRAZIER: Bob, we can hear you quite clearly, but we also note that it is very noisy near you. Is there a demonstration perhaps against the verdict? We were all worried about outbursts against what happened.

FRANKEN: Actually, Stephen, this is one of those places where there's always a demonstration. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the verdict. As a matter of the fact, the language we're hearing in the demonstration across the street is Spanish. This, of course, would not be the language that matters right here.

But the security -- to go on a little bit further with what you were discussing -- is extremely tight here. They've really doubled the normal security at a federal courthouse. And the security at a U.S. courthouse, as you well know, is already quite intense, of course relating to a great degree to the Timothy McVeigh case. But it is very, very heavy.

FRAZIER: At the courthouse, Bob Franken -- Bob, thank you very much.

Authorities say suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden is the mastermind behind those embassy bombings -- the Saudi millionaire believed to be living in Afghanistan now.

Just a short while ago, a senior member of Afghanistan's ruling Taleban talked about the embassy bombing convictions and bin Laden, too. He spoke via videophone with moderator Richard Roth at an annual conference of journalists sponsored by CNN.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAYED RAHMATULLAH HASHEMI, TALEBAN REPRESENTATIVE: Well, we are not defending Osama bin Laden. We are defending our principles. And we're actually defending universal principles, because we don't condone the terrorist acts on Kenya and Tanzania.

We admit that the attacks on U.S. embassies and Kenya and Tanzania were acts of terrorism. And if anybody is found guilty of that act in Afghanistan will have capital punishment. That has not -- we have not been given any kind of evidence by the United States.

On the other part, we do not see any difference between the terrorist acts taken by the United States against Afghanistan and those terrorist acts in Kenya and Tanzania. The only difference I see is attack of the United States of Afghanistan in '98, that act of terrorist was technologically more advanced than the terrorist acts in Kenya and Tanzania. So how are we going to differentiate between these two terrorist acts? Both are them were not declared. And both of them killed civilians; 19 innocent Afghans were killed on the attacks in 1998. So how are you going to condone these things? The issue is that the media is with the United States. The media is all in the West. So they can turn everything around and be dealt with that.

But the fact is, the United States has created all this problem.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FRAZIER: Osama bin Laden, the focus on the ambassador's comments there, one of the FBI's 10 most wanted fugitives now.

One more item before we leave that story: In the aftermath of the embassy bombings convictions, the United States is warning Americans overseas that they could become targets of terrorists. The State Department says it is not aware of any specific threat in response to the verdicts, but officials still urge U.S. citizens to maintain a high level of vigilance and to take appropriate steps to increase their security awareness.

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