After the 1998 bombings of US embassies and commercial buildings in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Sudan sent a memo, obtained by the Observer, to Louis Freeh, former director of the FBI, and "announces the arrest of two named bin Laden operatives held the day after the bombings after they crossed the Sudanese border from Kenya. They had cited the manager of a Khartoum leather factory owned by bin Laden as a reference for their visas, and were held after they tried to rent a flat overlooking in the US embassy in Khartoum, where they were thought to be planning an attack.