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US embassy bomber gets life
13/06/2001 00:28 - (SA)
New York - A bomber convicted in the deadly attack of the U.S. embassy in Kenya received life in prison on Tuesday after a Manhattan jury deadlocked on sentencing him to death for the blast that claimed 213 lives.
The anonymous jury deliberated for five days over the fate of Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-'Owhali, 24, who had confessed to his role in the August 7, 1998, attack on the embassy at Nairobi.
Prior to the reading of the jury's decision, the defendant appeared relaxed at the defence table, smiling as he awaited word. At one point, he held a copy of the Quran, Islam's holy book.
On Monday, the jurors sent out a note asking for instructions if they were unable to reach a unanimous decision on the death penalty. US District Judge Leonard Sand instructed the jurors that they could simply indicate there was no agreement, and the defendant would instead receive life without parole.
Al-'Owhali faced the death penalty under a 1996 federal law allowing prosecutors to seek execution in terrorist murder cases.
The last person sentenced to death in US District Court in Manhattan was Gerhard A Puff, a bank robber executed in 1954 for killing an FBI agent. One year earlier, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for nuclear espionage.
Same panel for other terrorist's sentence
The same panel that sentenced Al-'Owhali will deliberate the fate of a second terrorist convicted in a simultaneous bombing at the US embassy in Tanzania. The jury was expected to consider his sentence after a break of several days.
The jury heard 26 survivors of the Nairobi blast recount the ruinous effects of the attack on their lives as prosecutors argued for Al-'Owhali's death. Several jurors wept as they listened to the witnesses' graphic recollections of the terrorist bombing.
"No one who heard that testimony could ever forget it," Assistant US Attorney Michael Garcia reminded the jurors in his closing argument. In addition to the 213 deaths, the blast wounded another 5000.
The attack in Kenya and the simultaneous bombing at the US embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killed 224 people, including a dozen Americans.
In a confession recounted by an FBI agent during the trial, Al-'Owhali admitted to investigators that he and a second man rode a truck loaded with the bomb to the embassy in Kenya.
Although it was supposedly a suicide mission, Al-'Owhali jumped from the truck before it detonated, instead tossing stun grenades to distract embassy guards, according to his confession.
The United States, convinced Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden was behind the bombings, shot missiles afterward at locations in Afghanistan and Sudan in retaliation. Bin Laden, a fugitive, was indicted on conspiracy charges.
Life in prison without parole
David Baugh, a lawyer for Al-'Owhali, urged the jurors to select the other option for his client: life in prison without parole.
Al-'Owhali, who told the FBI that he grew up affluent in Saudi Arabia, confessed after his arrest that he was trained in Afghanistan and requested a mission during a personal meeting with bin Laden.
Prosecutors said his opportunity came when he was chosen to be among two suicide bombers in the Kenya attack.
The trial was expected to break for several days before a death penalty proceeding begins for defendant Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, the alleged bomb-maker in Tanzania.
Al-'Owhali, Mohamed and two others - Wadih El-Hage, a naturalised US citizen, and Mohamed Sadeek Odeh - were convicted of all charges in a 302-count indictment on May 29. The same jury was reconvened for the penalty phase.
The indictment alleged that the men conspired with others in bin Laden's organisation, al-Qaeda, to attack Americans anywhere they can be found to pressure the United States to stay out of the Middle East.
El-Hage and Odeh both face life in prison without parole when they are sentenced at an unspecified date.
- SAPA
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