Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan
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Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan (born April 9, 1960 or April 9, 1969, in Mombasa, Kenya) is a fugitive wanted by the United States government.
He is also known as Sheikh Ahmad Salem Suweidan, Sheikh Ahmed Salem Swedan, Sheikh Swedan, Sheikh Bahamadi, Ahmed Ally, Bahamad, Sheik Bahamad, Ahmed the Tall.
Swedan sometimes wears a light beard or moustache and has, in the past, managed a trucking business in Kenya.
He is wanted by the United States government in connection to the August 7, 1998 American embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya. Salim is alleged to have purchased the Toyota and Nissan trucks used in the attacks, flying out of Nairobi to Karachi, Pakistan five days before the assault was launched.
For his role in the 1998 attack, he was indicted in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Consequently, on October 10, 2001, Swedan was placed on the initial list of the FBI's top 22 Most Wanted Terrorists, which was released to the public by President Bush.
[edit] Confused identity, or arrest in Pakistan?
On July 12, 2002 a police intelligence officer in Karachi reported that Pakistani authorities had arrested Sheikh Ahmed Saleem, referring to him as an alleged financial advisor of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. He was reportedly caught along with two other al Qaeda militants. The officer further mis-identified Saleem as a Sudan national, who had apparently fled Afghanistan for Pakistan after the US-led military campaign began in October 2001. The three militants were arrested together during an overnight raid on a suburban apartment in the commercial port city of Karachi.
However, it later was suggested that Pakistani news organizations and the officials may have confused Ahmed Salim, the FBI-wanted Kenyan who had run a trucking business, with a Sudanese man with a similar name, Mamdouh Salim.
But then on September 9, 2002, the Lahore-based Daily Times once again reported that Ahmed Salim had indeed been arrested earlier that summer, on July 11, 2002, in Methadar, an area very close to the place from where Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was also arrested a month earlier, according to the paper.
On September 11, 2002, journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad of the Asia Times wrote that back in July 2002, Pakistani intelligence agents were led to Salim's cell by satellite telephone intercepts provided by the FBI. These led to the arrest in Karachi of a more junior al-Qaeda figure, a Saudi known only as Riyadh or Riaz. Riyadh in turn led investigators to Salim, who was arrested in Kharadar in the south of the city. [1]
Nevertheless, despite these detailed claims of his capture, Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan continues to be listed by the FBI as a Most Wanted Terrorist fugitive.
Amnesty International also claims his arrest in 2002. [2]
