African Embassy Bomber Gets Life Sentence With No Parole

A deeply divided jury Tuesday spared the life of a 24-year-old terrorist convicted of killing 213 people in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, sentencing him instead to life in prison without parole.

In rejecting the death penalty for Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-’Owhali, most of the jurors reasoned that execution would do little to alleviate the suffering of survivors and would make the killer a martyr for the terrorist organization run by Islamic militant Osama bin Laden.

Bin Laden has been indicted and is a fugitive in the almost simultaneous attacks on the embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.

Family members in the courtroom angrily criticized the decision.

“I am extremely disappointed that the jury accepted some or all of the patently false and dishonest arguments advanced by the defense to save the life of a convicted mass murderer,” said Howard Kavaler, a U.S. diplomat whose wife, Prabhi, perished in the blast.

The decision to spare al-’Owhali’s life was in stark contrast to the outcome for Oklahoma City terrorist bomber Timothy J. McVeigh, who was executed just a day earlier. The jurors in the Nairobi case explained their diverse reasoning in a lengthy written verdict form.

Ten of the 12 jurors wanted to avoid martyrdom, and nine felt the death penalty wouldn’t help the survivors. Five found that life imprisonment is a greater punishment, and four noted that the native of Saudi Arabia was raised in a different society and belief system. Four also argued that death by injection is too humane and would spare al-’Owhali from suffering.

U.S. District Judge Leonard B. Sand set sentencing, which is a formality, for Sept. 12. He also asked the jury to return Tuesday for death penalty deliberations in the case of Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, 27, of Tanzania, who was convicted in the Dar es Salaam bombing.

It was the first time prosecutors sought the death penalty for acts of terrorism committed against U.S. citizens abroad. It would have required a unanimous finding by jurors.

Al-’Owhali, who speaks little or no English, followed the court’s translation of the jury’s reasoning with his own copy of the verdict form. Afterward, Frederick H. Cohn, one of his lawyers, said that, based on an exchange with the defendant, “Clearly, he is not unhappy” with the sentence.

“We started this trial with two and one-half strikes against us,” Cohn said as he stood in sunlight outside the federal courthouse in Manhattan’s Foley Square. “We may not have gotten a hit. We got a base on balls.”

Prosecutors in the courtroom looked glum when the verdict was finished.

“The government sought the death penalty because it concluded that it was the just punishment for the defendant and his crimes,” U.S. Atty. Mary Jo White said later in a statement. “But the imposition of the death penalty is uniquely a matter for the jury to decide, and we respect their verdict.”

Sue Bartley, whose husband and son were killed in the Nairobi attack, left the courtroom with tears in her eyes.

“At least . . . al-’Owhali will not be free to harm anyone else,” she said bitterly.

Said diplomat Kavaler, “Mr. Al-’Owhali alone, whose life was deemed more precious than that of my wife and the 212 other innocent people slaughtered in Nairobi, can be counted among the true apostates and infidels of this world.”

The verdict in the penalty phase of the trial followed the conviction of al-’Owhali and three other defendants in the bombings. Of those, only Mohamed now faces a possible death penalty.

During the three-month trial, prosecutors charged that he had asked Bin Laden for a mission to carry out, scouted the embassy two days before the bombing, rode in the truck containing the massive explosive and threw stun grenades at guards in an effort to allow the vehicle to move closer to the building.

Prosecutors pushed hard for the death sentence, presenting testimony from 30 victims or their families of the lasting and devastating effects of the attack.

In his closing argument, Assistant U.S. Atty. Michael Garcia labeled al-’Owhali’s actions “mass murder committed in cold blood.”

“He wanted to kill, he intended to kill and he did kill,” Garcia said. “He intended to kill as many people as possible. This wasn’t a crime committed on sudden impulse.”

But David P. Baugh, one of al-’Owhali’s defense lawyers, said the jury had heard “precious little” about why the embassy bombings happened, and he sought to frame al-’Owhali’s case as a reflection of the hatred many Muslims have for America.

He said as many as half a million children had died as the result of U.S.-backed sanctions against Iraq that have been administered by the United Nations since 1990 and that 250 children still die each day.

Baugh said his client had acted out of concern for other Muslims and his purpose was “to stop killings, killings to stop killing.”