In both cases, the attacks were almost simultaneous. Sunday's twin bombings that killed 74 people in Kampala, Uganda's capital, also occurred only minutes apart.

Pulverizing synchronized bombings like this -- think 9/11, the Casablanca bombings of May 2003, the Madrid train bombings in March 2004, the London bombings of July 2005 -- have become an al-Qaida trademark.

Al-Shabaab, the Somali Islamist group allied with al-Qaida, has claimed responsibility for Sunday's attacks in Kampala but it hasn't attempted anything like this throughout its years of fighting in Somalia and the Kampala carnage would mark its first operation outside that country.

It is more likely that al-Qaida veterans masterminded the bombings in the name of al-Shabaab to alarm the United States and its allies and underline that despite recent setbacks and operational failures al-Qaida continues to spread and has a lethal reach.

Al-Shabaab declared the attacks were a warning to Uganda, Kenya and other East African nations to stop aiding the U.S.-backed Transitional Federal Government in Mogadishu, which the Islamists seek to topple.

But counter-terrorism analysts see a more ambitious motivation: Challenging U.S. President Barack Obama's administration, dragging it into yet another theater of war and ultimately threatening the United States itself, as the al-Qaida franchise in nearby Yemen has done recently.

Some analysts see the fingerprints of Fazul Abdullah Mohammed all over the Kampala bombings, with possibly more to come across East Africa as al-Shabaab is transformed into a transnational threat.

Mohammed has long been closely involved with what counter-terrorism specialists call al-Qaida Prime, the core leadership under Osama bin Laden and his longtime deputy, the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahari, who many see as the movement's eminence grise.

Mohammed was born to a middle-class Muslim family in 1974 in the Comoros Islands, a former French colony in the Indian Ocean 400 miles southeast of Dar es Salaam. He became intensely religious and went to Pakistan when he was 16, where he was recruited by al-Qaida.

His links to Somalia go back almost two decades. He was a member of an al-Qaida team sent to aid the Somali militias of powerful warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid in 1993.

Aidid was fighting U.N. forces led by the Americans who had intervened on an ostensibly humanitarian mission to aid Somalia's starving population caught up in a clan-driven war triggered by the 1991 overthrow of dictator Mohammed Siad Barre.

The hardcore Islamists taught the Somali fighters how to down U.S. helicopters with rocket-propelled grenades. That led to the "Black Hawk Down" incident in October 1993, in which two helicopters were shot down and 18 American troops killed in street battles that eventually led to a U.S. withdrawal -- bin Laden's first victory over the West.

That episode marked the first known example of al-Qaida providing direct support to the Somali Islamists.

Mohammed adapted quickly to the clandestine life. Well-educated and tech-savvy, he became an able forger and bombmaker. He speaks five languages and has a chameleon-like ability to change his appearance -- he has a fondness for baseball caps -- that allowed him to blend in anywhere.

He played a leading role in the U.S. embassy bombings in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Aug. 7, 1998.

He drove a white pickup ahead of the truck carrying the bomb in the attack on the Nairobi embassy that killed 224 people. Soon after that he took command of al-Qaida operations across East Africa.

He laid low in the island village of Siyu off Kenya's northern coast, where he was known as "Abdulkarim." He married a local girl, which gave him deep cover, and posed as a Muslim preacher.

His next big operation was the Nov. 26, 2002, attacks in Mombasa, Kenya's main port and a major tourist resort.

A suicide bomber drove an explosives-packed truck into the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel, killing 16 people, including three Israeli tourists.

Minutes earlier, Mohammed and an associate fired two SA-7b Strela surface-to-air missiles at an Israeli Boeing 757 taking vacationers home. Both missed.

earlier related report
al-Qaida mastermind has U.S. in his sights
Beirut, Lebanon (UPI) Jul 13, 2010 -U.S. counter-terrorism authorities have identified a leading Saudi-born al-Qaida operative as a key figure in a September 2009 plot to bomb New York's subway system, an attack that could have matched the carnage of 9/11.

Adnan el Shukrijumah, 34, is a naturalized U.S. citizen but he has a $5 million bounty on his head, a measure of the threat U.S. authorities consider he poses. He is linked directly to al-Qaida's top leadership and the subway plot underlines how they are still striving to pull off another cataclysmic assault on the United States.

Dozens of plots to attack targets in the United States have been thwarted or unraveled since 2001. Most have been do-it-yourself conspiracies by jihadist cells or individuals acting independently of al-Qaida's core leadership holed up in Pakistan.

But some, like the New York subway plot that involved three suicide bombers, clearly have engaged Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants who have long sought to unleash a 9/11-level attack in the United States.

In 2004, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft described Shukrijumah as a "clear and present danger" to the United States.

Abu Zubaydah, identified by U.S. officials as a top al-Qaida commander who was captured in Faisalbad, Pakistan, on March 28, 2002, told his interrogators that Shukrijumah was one of the most likely al-Qaida operatives to attack the United States or Western Europe.

The last successful al-Qaida attack in the West was the July 7, 2005, suicide bombings against London's transport system. Three subway trains and a double-decker bus were hit, killing 52 people.

Shukrijumah, who is believed to be based in Pakistan, was charged on July 7 with directing the failed New York subway plot and involvement in a similar conspiracy to bomb London and Manchester that was foiled by British security authorities in 2009.

He has been high on the U.S. wanted list after he was named by Khaled Sheik Mohammed, al-Qaida's operations chief captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, on March 1, 2003.

But the 5-foot-4 jihadist has eluded a global manhunt for eight years. He's a master of disguise who speaks half a dozen languages, including American English with a trace of accent. He is said to carry multiple passports, including Saudi Arabian, Canadian, Guyanese and Trinidadian documents.

He's considered one of the five most dangerous terrorist fugitives, largely because having lived in the United States for years he is able to move around in Western society without arousing suspicion.

For several months in 2003, there was a flurry of reported sightings in Latin America and the Caribbean but U.S. authorities say they believe he went to ground in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt.

However, last summer the CIA said he was traveling around the Middle East using an alias and a Saudi diplomatic passport. Riyadh denied that.

The eldest of five children, Adnan Ghulshair el Shukrijumah was born Aug. 4, 1975, in Medina, Saudi Arabia. His father Gulshair, was a Guyanese and a radical Muslim cleric, his mother Zuhrah was Saudi Arabian.

When Shukrijumah was young, his father was assigned to Trinidad and Tobago as a Muslim missionary. The family moved to Florida in 1985 and in 1996 settled in Miramar, a Fort Lauderdale suburb. Shukrijumah studied computer engineering at Broward Community College.

There he became friends with Jose Padilla, who would achieve notoriety in May 2002 when he was arrested in Chicago for allegedly planning to detonate a radioactive uranium-enriched bomb in 2002. That charge was eventually dropped but Padilla was sentenced to 17 years in 2008 for aiding terrorists.

After 9/11, Shukrijumah came under suspicion because of his links to a Muslim named Imran Farouk Mandhai, who was later convicted of trying to blow up South Florida power plants.

But the FBI apparently had no idea of his real status until they were able to unravel the skein of aliases -- at least six -- that he used.

Abu Zubaydah told his interrogators after being waterboarded in late 2002 of several al-Qaida operations he knew of. One involved "Jaafar al Tayyar," Arabic for "Jaafar the pilot," who he said would deliver an "American Hiroshima" using radioactive bombs.

But it wasn't until Khaled Sheik Mohammed, who had met Shukrijumah in Pakistan, spilled the beans that they realized the fugitive had lived in Florida for 16 years.

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