Manhattan federal court indicts Egyptians for helping Bin Laden

WASHINGTON -- Two Egyptians have been indicted by a U.S. federal court for participating in the bombings of U.S. embassies in east Africa in 1998.

Ibrahim Eidarous and Adel Abdel Bary were indicted in Manhattan federal court. They along with Bin Laden and others are named in the bombing campaign that destroyed the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

The indictments said the fingerprints of Eidarous and Abdel Bary were found on communiques sent to news organizations the day after the attacks, reports Middle East Newsline. More than 200 people were killed and more than 4,000 were injured by the blasts. The two men were arrested in London by British authorities in July and face extradition to the United States.

The bombings were said to have been masterminded by Saudi billionaire fugitive Osama Bin Laden and the indictments said the Egyptian Islamic Jihad group participated in retaliation for the arrest of several key members. A trial has been set for Sept. 5.

Eidarous and Abdel Bary were charged with being heads of the London cell of Jihad. Leaders of the group -- Ayman Al Zawahiri and Muhammad Atef -- joined in an effort to help Bin Laden. Jihad is now split between the faction led by Al Zawahiri and a splinter group that has launched a reconciliation effort with Egypt.

Eight of the 17 people charged in the indictments remain fugitives. This includes Bin Laden who is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan.

In Washington, FBI director Louis Freeh said the agency is focusing on counterterrorism through a reorganization that has created a new division to deal with terrorism. Freeh said the United States is facing a rise in terrorism and hate crimes against Americans.

"The escalation," Freeh told the Anti-Defamation League on Monday, "again in the number and gravity and geographic diversity of terrorism crimes, both within the United States and of course around the world, have required us to take that particular set of variables, offenses and resources and put them together in a single dedicated division so they would not be overshadowed by matters of counterintelligence nor would they tend to compromise or slow down the attention that has to be paid to counterintelligence, clearly a continuing and very critical aspect of what we do."