By Anthony C Heaford, last update 8 August 2023

On 7 August 1998 two truck bombs exploded outside the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania almost simultaneously, murdering over two-hundred and wounding over four-thousand more. The truck bomb that exploded in Kenya contained about five hundred cylinders of TNT explosive, each about the size of a drinks can.

I believe I know where and when that TNT was manufactured - inside a front company 17-miles south of Al Qa’idah town in central Yemen, one used by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and his terrorist cell. That front company was called YemPak (because it was a Yemen-Pakistan collaboration), located inside the multi-billion dollar Hayel Saeed Anam Group’s secure hilltop headquarters compound at PO Box 5302 Taiz. My primary evidence of the Hayel Saeed Anam Group’s complicity with KSM’s terror cell is four-fold:

Assertion summary

I visited a terrorist cell front company in September 1997 Yemen that hosted Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two of his associates (Pakistani chemical engineers), and which had sourced industrial quantities of TNT explosive chemicals in August 1996. I believe the TNT used in the 7 August 1998 embassy bombs was manufactured and packaged in that front company and that the bombers trained in a base 17-miles north, besides Al Qa’idah town.

Unfortunately only two elements of my evidence are independently verifiable - the proximity of PO Box 5302 to Al Qa’idah town (directions), and the sourcing of TNT component chemicals by the HSA Group in August 1996:

My assertion that I met KSM at PO Box 5302 and that the two men I worked with said they were Pakistani chemistry graduates is backed only by my testimony and photos from my 1997 visit to Yemen.

I have been able to provisionally identify everyone in the last photo, despite its blurred quality, and am confident enough to report those identities publicly below. I am in the center with HSA Group managing director Saeed Alrobaidi and his general manager Mohamed (Mohamed A. Salem?) on one side, and confessed / convicted terrorist operators KSM and Ahmed al-Darbi (introduced to me as ‘the Engineer’ and ‘Dino’) on the other side.

Confirming / denying the identities of the men in this photo is key to validating or dismissing my claims. Given the factual evidence of the HSA Group sourcing TNT component chemicals in 1996, their headquarters proximity to Al Qa’idah town and the significance of my allegations, I believe an investigation of my photos and assertions is justified. That justification is further strengthened when my claim of seeing KSM’s Pakistani terrorist cell operating from a nearly empty factory building in 1997 Yemen, is compared to this statement by the US Ambassador to Yemen (1997-01), Barbara Bodine. In a 2012 PBS interview Bodine said: 

Establishing the identities of the four men in my line-up photo above should be fairly easy if investigating authorities were to ask the HSA Group’s owners / directors. Someone such as Dirhem Abdo Saeed. Dirhem Abdo Saeed is a member of the Hayel Saeed family of Yemen, is vice chairman of the HSA Group, managing director of HSA’s London office Longulf Trading (that purchased the printing machinery I was installing in KSM’s front company at PO Box 5302), chairman of HSA’s largest investment in Britain called Cepac Limited, and he is an honorary vice-president of the British-Yemeni Society.

Other supporting evidence:

According to the US Department of Defense detainee assessment, someone using a fake passport and an alias used by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed flew into Nairobi Kenya before the 6 August embassy bombing:

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The first suspect caught and questioned by the FBI gave them the contact number he had used to aid his escape from Kenya after surviving the bombings. That telephone number was in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa. The FBI noted:

“... the would-be suicide bomber, al-Owhali, ran away from the bomb truck at the last minute and survived. However, he had no money or passport or plan by which to escape Kenya. Days later, he called a telephone number in Yemen and thus arranged to have money transferred to him… “ 

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In 1982 a director of the multi-billion dollar family owned Hayel Saeed Anam (HSA) Group of Yemen gave his power of attorney to Ahmed Idris Nasreddin. Eritrean born (tbc) Nasreddin was a prominent businessman in Nigeria and his business partner was Egyptian-born Youssef Nada. In 1984 Nasreddin used the HSA Group director’s power of attorney to establish a Swiss shell financial company called MIGA (Malaysian Swiss Gulf & African Chamber).

In August 2002 former US Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill described Nada and Nasreddin as "supporters of terrorism" involved in "an extensive financial network providing support to Al Qaeda and other terrorist-related organizations.” US Assistant Treasury Secretary Juan Zarate described MIGA as "a very good example of an investment company that is used as a shell to hide and move money."

Here’s the evidence that the HSA Group has long and established links to terrorism financing:

That HSA Group terror funding link is detailed by Fox News here (click here to open .pdf file)

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In March 1997 three family members of the HSA Group became directors of a Cayman Islands financial shell company called Atlantic Investments. One of those directors used the HSA Group HQ address of PO Box 5302 Taiz Yemen to register his interest. This is recorded in the Paradise Papers here. The founding directors of Atlantic Investments, the St Clair-Morgan family of Jersey, have been implicated in price skimming of the UN run Iraqi Oil-for-Food program (as has Malaysian HSA subsidiary Pacific-Interlink) and invesigated for illegal arms dealing.