Ali Mohamed

Ali Mohammed, probably an al-Qaeda member, was among those arrested, in the U.S., for the 1998 bombing of U.S. Embassies in Africa. He was a former Egyptian soldier named Ali Mohamed (sometimes called "al-Amriki", the American), who is alleged to have provided training and assistance to Mr Bin Laden's operatives. FBI special agent Jack Cloonan calls him "bin Laden's first trainer".

Originally an Egyptian army captain, in the 1980s Mohamed came to the US and became a supply sergeant supporting United States Army Special Forces at Fort Bragg; he was not a member of Special Forces proper. At the same time he was involved with Egyptian Islamic Jihad (which "merged" with al-Qaeda in the 1990s), and later with al-Qaeda itself. Mohamed boasted of fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. He had worked for the CIA in the earlier 1980s, but the agency supposedly dropped him after he boasted of his relationship. But Mohamed's behavior led his commanding officer, LTC Robert Anderson, to believe he was still a US intelligence asset. ("I assumed the CIA", said Anderson.) In 1989 Mohamed  trained anti-Soviet fighters in his spare time, apparently at the al-Khifah center in Brooklyn. He was "honorably discharged" from the US military in November 1989.