A federal judge in Virginia last Wednesday found the government of Sudan liable for the attack on the Cole in a lawsuit in which the sailors' relatives argued that al-Qaida could not have succeeded without the African nation providing a safe haven for bin Laden and financial support. No damage amount has yet been awarded.

In the late 1990s, bin Attash allegedly alternated between serving as bin Laden's bodyguard and fighting Afghanistan's Northern Alliance force. He lost his right leg in a battlefield accident in 1997, U.S. intelligence says.

Bin Attash helped choose the Sept. 11 hijackers and made two flights on U.S. airlines to assess in-flight security procedures, authorities allege. Bin Laden wanted bin Attash to be one of the hijackers on Sept. 11, but that plan was foiled when bin Attash was arrested in Yemen in April of that year and briefly imprisoned after attempting to get a U.S. visa.

After Sept. 11, he helped shore up bin Laden defenses at Tora Bora, bin Laden's last stand when the U.S. routed the Taliban regime from Afghanistan. He fled to Pakistan and over the next year in Karachi served as a link between al-Qaida senior leadership and the network in Saudi Arabia, also helping to move operatives from South and Southeast Asia to the Saudi peninsula, officials allege.

In the months before his 2003 arrest, he and others were close to executing a plot to simultaneously attack the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Westerners at the airport and Westerners living in the area.