A prosecutor has portrayed a man charged in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa as a top aide to Osama bin Laden at the start of a terrorism trial.

Khaled al-Fawwaz is being tried alone after one co-defendant pleaded guilty and another died this month.

The attacks in Kenya and Tanzania killed 224 people, including a dozen Americans.

Federal prosecutor Nicholas Lewin told an anonymous Manhattan jury on Thursday that al-Fawwaz led one of al-Qaida’s early training camps and helped lead a cell of terrorists in Africa. He said al-Fawwaz also made sure bin Laden’s 1996 declaration of war against the United States reached the world.

Al-Fawwaz has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy. He was extradited from Great Britain in 2012.

(AP)