Al-Qaida plot aimed at Kenya embassy

Terror suspect reveals details of bombing plan

? Al-Qaida operatives planned to destroy the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi in June with a truck bomb and a hijacked plane loaded with explosives, a plot described in a Kenya police report seen Friday by The Associated Press.

The report, based on an interrogation of a terror suspect, could explain why the U.S. Embassy was closed June 20-24 and why Kenyan officials banned flights June 20-July 8 to and from Somalia, a lawless neighbor and suspected haven for terrorists.

Those actions suggest some knowledge of the plot by U.S. and Kenyan authorities, on alert to terror threats since the 1998 car bombing of the old U.S. Embassy in downtown Nairobi, which killed 219 people including 12 Americans.

Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida — the Islamic terror group that carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — claimed responsibility for the 1998 embassy attack as well as the deadly 2002 bombing of a Kenyan hotel north of Mombasa.

The suspect who described the plot to attack the embassy in June, Salmin Mohammed Khamis, is among six men whose murder trial begins Monday in the hotel attack.

A source close to the trial provided AP with the police report of Khamis’ alleged account, taken hours after his June 17 arrest.

A Kenyan prosecutor declined to comment on the plot but confirmed the existence of 164 statements from witnesses and investigators submitted for the trial.

In the police report, Khamis does not comment on the hotel attack, which killed 13 people including three Israelis. Instead, the 27-year-old Kenyan gives an insider’s account of the embassy plot, for which he has not been charged.