Even so, a trail is emerging–and U.S. officials say it seems to lead straight to Osama bin Laden’s ancestral home, Yemen, by way of Kenya’s anarchic neighbor, Somalia. The growing signs of a Yemeni connection add credence to a statement that was posted on the Internet shortly after the attacks, claiming responsibility in Al Qaeda’s name. Intelligence sources have indicated to NEWSWEEK that computer experts have teased out at least partial proof that the message originated from a confirmed Qaeda source.
The evidence linking the Nov. 28 attacks to Yemen includes the remains of two SA-7 missiles. They were picked up near Mombasa’s airport, where they had narrowly missed a Tel Aviv-bound Arkia jet with 271 people aboard. U.S. officials say the weapons’ serial numbers were close to those of a similar missile that was fired at a U.S. plane last May in Saudi Arabia. Intelligence specialists believe all three missiles belonged to a batch of Soviet-made SAMs from the 1970s that apparently was stolen from a Yemeni government arsenal in the early ’90s. A senior U.S. official said it was a “working theory” of investigators that the missiles came from Yemen, but there was no suspicion of Yemeni government involvement. Similar weapons are readily available on the “gray market” in Yemen and elsewhere for prices as low as $500. SA-7s are less sophisticated and less accurate than other Soviet-era missiles, like the SA-14, -16 and -18, that are on sale at arms bazaars around the region for as little as $20,000.
Investigators say the attackers were likely supported by the Somali-based group Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya. The Islamist group, which used to operate terrorist-training camps inside Somalia, was linked to the conspirators who carried out the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Sources close to its former leaders claim that the group has disbanded, but security sources say it has gone underground. U.S. intelligence sources say Al-Itihaad can still muster a force of between 2,000 and 4,000 committed fighters. The known movements of its operatives between Somalia, Kenya and Yemen have reinforced the belief inside U.S. intelligence that the Nov. 28 attacks were probably the work of a Qaeda-Al-Itihaad partnership.
Somalis say the partnership continues. “You cannot trust Al-Itihaad, because they’re members of Al Qaeda,” says Muhammad Kanyare Afrah, one of the 20 or so warlords who continue to struggle for dominance in Somalia. “There’s no law in our country, so they can do their business.” The terrorist threat in Kenya persists as well. The managers of a Mombasa travel agency recently told authorities that a Yemeni had offered one of their salesclerks a bribe for the schedule of German flight crews running surveillance missions from Mombasa. The Germans quickly revised their itineraries.
