Hage, Wadih el (1960–)

Wadih el Hage (aka Abdus Sabbur; Abd al Sabbur; Wadia; Abu Abdullah al Lubnani; Norman; Wa'da Norman; the Manager; Tanzanite), a U.S. citizen, served for several years as Osama bin Laden's personal secretary and has been called a “front man” for the leader of al Qaeda. He was indicted for his part in the August 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa and is serving a life sentence for conspiracy to commit terrorism.

Wadih el Hage was born in Sidon, Lebanon, to a Christian family. He grew up in Kuwait and converted to Islam as a teenager. He immigrated to the United States in 1978 and graduated from the University of Southwestern Louisiana with a degree in urban planning. During the 1980s, Hage traveled to Pakistan to join the Afghani fight against the Soviets and worked in a refugee clinic. He is thought to have first met bin Laden at this time. In 1985, after returning to the United States, he married the American April Ray, a fellow convert to Islam. The couple now has seven children. Hage and his family lived in Tucson, Arizona, and Dallas, Texas, before he accepted the position as bin Laden's personal secretary. Between 1991 and 1994, the family lived in Sudan. Hage apparently worked on several of bin Laden's farming and chemical manufacturing projects, and he may have become involved with al Qaeda at this time.

From Sudan, the Hage family moved to Nairobi, Kenya, and Hage operated the “Help Africa People” charity and a gemstone business called “Tanzanite King.” Both businesses appear to have been fronts for the al Qaeda Kenyan cell, of which Hage was the leader. After an al Qaeda commander died in a 1996 ferry boat accident in Kenya, Hage allegedly investigated and sent bin Laden a report. (After his September 1998 arrest, he denied this before a New York grand jury and provoked a perjury charge.)

The FBI twice raided Hage's Nairobi home in 1997 and confiscated a computer, computer disks, notebooks, and a phone book. According to press reports, the books contained coded phone numbers of al Qaeda leaders and bin Laden's satellite telephone number. Soon after the raids, the family returned to the United States. On August 7, 1998, [Page 247]truck bombs exploded just minutes apart at the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 224 people. At the time of the attacks, Hage and his family were living in Arlington, Texas.