In a complaint unsealed yesterday in Manhattan against Wadih el Hage, federal prosecutors offered their most detailed portrait to date of bin Laden's operations in East Africa and their first effort to link them to supporters in the United States. El Hage is portrayed in the complaint as a major player in bin Laden's radical Islamic network who became a close friend of two alleged perpetrators of the Nairobi bombing.

Prosecutors also unsealed a criminal complaint yesterday against Haroun Fazil, a fugitive from the tiny archipelago of Comoros who allegedly participated in the Kenya attack. Fazil, an explosives expert who was known as Abdallah Mohammed Fazul in Comoros, allegedly rented the villa outside Nairobi that was used to build the bomb, helped plan the assault, then drove a white pickup truck that led a bomb-laden vehicle to the embassy on Aug. 7.

El Hage -- who allegedly lived with bin Laden in Sudan until 1994, then lived with Fazil while working in the gem business in Kenya until 1997 -- was not charged with participating in the Kenya bombing or a simultaneous blast at the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania. But he was charged with lying to the FBI last month when he claimed he did not know Mohammed Saddiq Odeh, who has been charged in the Nairobi bombing.