A Saudi who was accused of being one of Osama bin Laden’s earliest and most trusted lieutenants was convicted on Thursday of joining a global conspiracy to kill Americans that included Al Qaeda’s deadly 1998 bombings of two United States Embassies in East Africa.
The defendant, Khaled al-Fawwaz, ran a Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan and helped lead Al Qaeda’s cell in Nairobi, Kenya, before becoming “Bin Laden’s man in London” in 1994, federal prosecutors told the jury.
There, he worked closely with Bin Laden’s then second-in-command, Muhammad Atef, helping Western journalists arrange interviews with Bin Laden and working to publicize Bin Laden’s 1998 fatwa calling for Muslims to kill Americans anywhere in the world.
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Ms. Sternheim told the jury that the government had “exaggerated” the list’s importance, but another prosecutor, Stephen J. Ritchin, said evidence and testimony confirmed its significance.
“The defendant’s name is not on this list by accident,” Mr. Ritchin said.
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