Bomb suspects 'had US passports'
By Patrick Sawer, Evening Standard
29 November 2002
Two of 12 suspects being held in connection with the terrorist attack which killed 15 at a Kenyan hotel were using US passports, it was claimed today.
The manager of a hotel where the man and woman were staying when the suicide bombers devastated the Mombasa Paradise today revealed the pair were from Florida. Ben Wafula, general manager of Le Soleil Beach Club, said: "They had American passports and they said they were from Florida."
It came as the bodies of the Israeli victims were flown home today. The dead were identified as brothers Noy and Dvir Anter, aged 12 and 14, from the West Bank settlement of Ariel, and Albert Dehaville, a 60-year-old tour guide from Raanana.
Hotel manager Mr Wafula said the suspects are a mixed-race man and a white woman, both in their early
twenties. They arrived on Monday and were hurriedly trying to check out yesterday morning, two hours after the bombing of the Paradise Hotel, about three miles away. Hotel staff then alerted police.
US embassy spokesman Peter Claussen, when asked about the US passport holders, said it had "indications from its own information that this may be correct".
The latest development increases suspicion that the attack on the Paradise hotel and the simultaneous firing of two missiles at an Israeli jet leaving Mombasa airport was the work of al Qaeda.
The flight school used by a number of the 11 September hijackers was in Florida. But if the pair are linked to the attack it will also embarrass the US authorities that they were able to travel freely.
Police commissioner Philemon Abong'o said: "Immediately after the incident we detained two for interrogation and I feel they could give us useful information."
US and Israeli agents have joined the search for the terror gang and are searching the wreckage of the hotel for clues. All 235 Israeli survivors of the attack were flown home as their government vowed to catch the terrorists.
Arriving at Lod airforce base, near Tel Aviv, the first of the evacuees spoke of their terror and questioned whether they would ever be able to feel safe anywhere. Many cried in relief at being home as they disembarked, draped in blankets and clutching each other before falling into the arms of loved ones.
The Israeli army sent a team of 150 doctors, psychologists and soldiers to Mombasa after the attack on the Paradise hotel which killed nine Kenyans, three Israelis and the three suicide bombers.
The terrorists timed their attack on the hotel to coincide with the arrival of a large party of guests.
A group of traditional dancers hired to greet the new party bore the full brunt of the explosion after a jeep packed with explosives crashed through the hotel's gates.
Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden's brother today confirmed that the voice on a recently released tape was that of the world's most wanted terrorist. Yeslam bin Laden, 52, said he recognised the voice of his brother not only on the tape three weeks ago but in several others that have surfaced during the last few months.
In the latest tape Bin Laden warned Britain, Australia, France, Italy, Canada and Germany not to join a US-led war in Iraq or they would face the kind of "scattered attacks that have taken place recently".
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