Ex-Green Beret Linked To Bin Laden

A former U.S. Special Forces sergeant has been charged in connection with the alleged terrorism campaign against Americans by the Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, The New York Times reported Friday.

Ali Mohamed, 46, is being held at a federal jail in Manhattan after being charged last month, the newspaper said, citing law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The federal charges, which have been filed under a court seal, are an attempt by the government to prove bin Laden was behind this summer's U.S. Embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, and other attacks against U.S. soldiers in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, The Times said.

They also link bin Laden and a group of Islamic militants in Brooklyn who were involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and plots to blow up the United Nations and other city landmarks.

Meanwhile, prosecutors investigating bin Laden are trying to strike a plea deal with one of Mohamed's former associates who was arrested this year outside Washington, D.C., The Times said, citing court records.

Mohamed was honorably discharged from the Army's Special Forces base in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in 1989 after serving three years there. A native of Egypt, where he was an officer, Mohamed moved to the United States in 1985 and became a permanent resident.

While in the Army, he traveled to New York and provided military training to local Muslims preparing to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, a witness at the 1995 trial of the militants accused of plotting to destroy the landmarks testified.

Some of his students included El Sayyid Nosair, the Egyptian immigrant convicted of killing Jewish Defense League founder Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1990, the witness said.

Federal officials declined to say why the charges were filed in secret, the newspaper reported. Prosecutors sometimes do so to persuade a defendant to cooperate with them and to avoid alerting other suspects to the case, the newspaper said.