A day after his detention July 12, 2002, Fazul escaped, outwitting seven police officers armed with AK-47s and 9mm pistols. The head of Al Qaeda's East African terror cell evaded capture then, and at least one other time a year later, according to an Associated Press investigation.
Just months after his brush with jail, Fazul masterminded Al Qaeda attacks in Kenya on Nov. 28, 2002, police and intelligence officials allege.
In one, attackers rammed an SUV full of explosives into an Israeli-owned hotel on Kenya's coast, killing 15 people. Separately, two surface-to-air missiles narrowly missed an Israeli-owned airliner packed with Israeli tourists as it took off from Mombasa.
The FBI considers Fazul among the top must-capture Al Qaeda operatives. In May the Justice Department listed him as one of seven suspects that ''present a clear and present danger to America."
The investigation of Fazul provides insight into how he and Al Qaeda have operated in East Africa, a region where borders are porous and police are corrupt, poorly trained, and ill-equipped.
Interviews with dozens of religious leaders, family, friends, and neighbors of suspects uncovered deep Al Qaeda roots in the region.
Reporters also spoke to Western and Kenyan officials and reviewed transcripts of FBI interviews, copies of Kenyan police reports -- exclusively obtained by AP -- and court testimony at the 2001 New York trial of four embassy bombers as well as the Kenyan trial of suspects allegedly involved in the 2002 Paradise Hotel attack.
Fazul rose through Al Qaeda's ranks and is considered the leader of a cell that has been in and out of Kenya since the early 1990s, when Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was in neighboring Sudan.
The cell's presence and the ability of its members to settle in the region and evade capture has caused the United States to consider East Africa a key battleground in its war against terrorism.
''Al Qaeda spent its first six years in East Africa, so they know the area, and they can operate easily," said Ted Dagne, an Africa specialist at the Congressional Research Service.
When Fazul was detained in 2002, police regarded him as a ''normal robbery suspect," one of the officers who handled the case said.
