Many American sources concluded that the bombings were intended as revenge for United States involvement in the extradition and alleged torture of four members of
Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) who had been arrested in Albania in the two months prior to the attacks for a
series of murders in Egypt. Between June and July,
Ahmad Isma'il 'Uthman Saleh,
Ahmad Ibrahim al-Sayyid al-Naggar,
Shawqi Salama Mustafa Atiya, and
Mohamed Hassan Tita were all
renditioned from Albania to Egypt with the co-operation of the U.S.; the four men were accused of participating in the assassination of
Rifaat el-Mahgoub, as well as a later plot against the
Khan el-Khalili market in
Cairo. The following month, a communique was issued warning the United States that a "response" was being prepared to "repay" them for their interference. However, the
9/11 Commission Report claims that preparations began shortly after
Osama bin Laden issued his February 1998
fatwa. truck, similar to that used in
Dar es Salaam|280x280px According to journalist
Lawrence Wright, the Nairobi operation was named after the
Kaaba in
Mecca; the Dar es Salaam bombing was called Operation
al-Aqsa in
Jerusalem, but "neither had an obvious connection to the American embassies in Africa. Bin Laden initially said that the sites had been targeted because of the 'invasion' of Somalia; then he described an American plan to partition Sudan, which he said was hatched in the embassy in Nairobi. He also told his followers that the
genocide in Rwanda had been planned inside the two American embassies." Wright concludes that bin Laden's actual goal was "to lure the United States into Afghanistan, which had long been called 'The Graveyard of Empires.'" In the second half of 1999, bin Laden spoke to a crowd of graduates from a training camp in Afghanistan about the attacks and explained the reasons for targeting the Nairobi embassy. Bin Laden said
Operation Restore Hope in Somalia was directed from the Nairobi embassy and claimed the lives of 30,000 Muslims, the Southern Sudanese rebel leader
John Garang was supported from there and it was the largest American Intelligence center in East Africa. In May 1998, a villa in Nairobi was purchased by one of the bombers to enable a bomb to be built in the garage.
Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan purchased a beige
Toyota Dyna truck in Nairobi and a 1987
Nissan Atlas refrigeration truck in Dar es Salaam. Six metal bars were used to form a "cage" on the back of the Atlas to accommodate the bomb. In June 1998, KK Mohamed rented House 213 in the
Illala district of Dar es Salaam, about from the U.S. embassy. A white
Suzuki Samurai was used to haul bomb components, hidden in rice sacks, to House 213. In both Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Mohammed Odeh supervised construction of two very large destructive devices. The Nairobi bomb was made of 400 to 500 cylinders of
TNT (about the size of
drink cans), ammonium nitrate, aluminum powder, and
detonating cord. The explosives were packed into twenty specially designed wooden crates that were sealed and then placed in the bed of the trucks.
Muhsin Musa Matwalli Atwah ran a wire from the bomb to a set of batteries in the back of the truck cab and then to a detonator switch beneath the dashboard. The bombings were scheduled for August 7, the eighth anniversary of the arrival of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia during the early stages of the
Persian Gulf War, likely a choice by bin Laden. When bin Laden's bodyguard asked him after the attacks whether so many victims were really necessary, he replied referring to
al-Qaeda's 1996 and 1998
fatwas declaring war on America and Israel: "We warned the whole world what would happen to the friends of America. We weren't responsible for any victims from the minute we warned those countries." ==Attacks and casualties==