Embassy bombing survivor speaks out

She emerged from the high-rise building in Nairobi to find streets crowded with thousands of people amid broken glass and charred, twisted metal.

"I looked up and saw a burning vehicle. I saw the charred remains of what was once a human being," Bushnell said.

Her testimony was the most dramatic so far in the two-month federal trial of four men charged with bombing U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The four men allegedly worked with alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden in plotting the nearly simultaneous blasts in 1998, killing 224 people, including 12 Americans. Thousands more were injured.

The jury Thursday watched a videotape showing the charred, naked bodies of the victims. As the 25-minute video was shown, one juror covered her mouth with both hands as she watched images of limbless bodies and men in bloody suit coats hurling debris in a desperate search for survivors.

At that moment, defendants Wadih El-Hage, 40, sat with a hand over his mouth, Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, 27, rested his head in one hand and Mohamed Sadeek Odeh, 36, was slumped in his chair.

Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-'Owhali, 24, who allegedly rode in the bomb vehicle right up to the U.S. embassy guard gates in Nairobi, twirled a small black stick in his mouth. A moment earlier, he had turned around to look at the courtroom clock.

If convicted of conspiracy, El-Hage and Odeh could face life in prison. Mohamed and Al-'Owhali could face the death penalty.

As Bushnell took the stand, a three-dimensional model of the embassy was placed before jurors. She described how a loud explosion interrupted a meeting on the day of the bombing with Kenya's minister of trade in a building next to the embassy. As he walked toward the window to look outside, there was a second blast. She suspects she blacked out and awoke in a shaky room where a teacup rattled.

Then, she said, the teacup went quiet, leaving her seemingly alone.

"The only other person was a man face down on the floor. I thought he was dead," she said.

A colleague appeared and she left the room, spotting "someone's shoe and a great deal of blood. Then the enormity of the blast began to hit."

She followed a crush of people descending a stairwell quietly.

"There was blood everywhere on the banister. I could feel the person behind me bleeding onto me and my lower back," she said.

Then someone yelled fire and smoke bellowed up the stairwell. Bushnell's lip bled profusely.

"I had a lot of blood on me but was unsure which was my blood and which was the blood of other people," Bushnell said.

Bushnell remained ambassador to Kenya until May 1999. Five months later she became U.S. ambassador to Guatemala.

She provided a narrative as prosecutors showed jurors pictures of the destruction in Nairobi. The horror of the tragedy shook her poise as one of the office photographs was flashed to jurors.

"What was once a wall," she said, pausing as she choked up, "no longer there."<