KENYA: A trial in Kenya is throwing light on al-Qaeda's alleged involvement in east Africa, Declan Walsh reports from Nairobi
He came to the Swahili coast as a simple man of God. Three years ago Abdul Karim landed at Siyu, a sleepy village on Pate Island, off northern Kenya.
The serious young man soon made his life there.
He took up lodgings with a village elder, married his daughter and started wandering the dusty streets, preaching the word of Islam. Islanders saw him as a loner, although he did start a new soccer team. He called it Kabul, after the capital of Afghanistan.
Then, one year ago, Karim suddenly disappeared. He slipped away by boat; mostly probably to Somalia, the lawless state 80 kilometres to the north.
Now Karim can be easily found in just one place: on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists website.
Photos show the baby-faced preacher above his real name, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed. His place of birth - the Comoros Islands - is listed, as are his various aliases and dates of birth. So are details of a $25 million reward for information leading to his arrest, alongside a stern warning: "Should be considered armed and dangerous".
East Africa's paradisiacal Indian Ocean coast, and a few remote inland towns, have become a covert battlefield in America's global war on terror. Al-Qaeda extremists have weaved into the close-knit Muslims communities, keeping a low profile and exploiting poor border controls to plot "spectacular" terrorist attacks.
Now US soldiers and spies have deployed to stop them. American marines have conducted numerous military exercises in Kenya; special agents are reportedly offering cash rewards for al-Qaeda suspects in Somalia.
Mohammed is allegedly al-Qaeda's regional ringleader. Police believe he masterminded the November 2002 suicide bombing of an Israeli hotel north of Mombasa in which 18 people, 12 of them Kenyans, died. He also played a role in the 1998 bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed about 230.
This week four of his alleged co-conspirators stood trial in Nairobi, facing 15 counts of murder for their part in the Mombasa bombing. All are Kenyan Muslims. A fifth suspect, Feisal Ali Noor, was also due to stand trial but blew himself up with a grenade in a coastal police station after being arrested.
Three other Kenyans are being tried separately on lesser charges, including plotting to destroy the new US embassy in Nairobi last June. They include Kubwa Mohamed Seif - the elderly fisherman whose daughter married Fazul Abdullah Mohammed on Pate Island.
The sweep for other suspects is led by several thousand US soldiers based at a desert camp in Djibouti, a tiny port nation to the north. Last month, American and Kenyan soldiers conducted joint military operations on the idyllic tourist island of Lamu.
With its ancient Swahili traditions and whitesand beaches, Lamu is best known for its cultural tolerance and slow pace of life. But not all its visitors are tourists. Al-Qaeda terrorists are believed to have used its unpatrolled waters to smuggle explosives.
Special forces have also been active in Somalia. According to a recent UN report, al-Qaeda used Somalia as a transhipment point for the weapons used in the Mombasa attacks.