Jordan Pardons Foreign Journalist
King Abdullah II pardoned a Japanese journalist Monday who had been sentenced to 18 months in prison for accidentally killing a Jordanian airport guard with a cluster bomb in his luggage.
Hiroki Gomi, 36, had taken the bomb from Iraq as a souvenir. He was passing through security at the Amman airport May 1 when an X-ray machine detected the bomb. It exploded as the guard searched the bag, killing him and wounding three other people.
Gomi, a photographer for Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun newspaper, had said he didn’t know the bomb was live. He was talking on his cell phone several feet away when it exploded.
A Jordanian court convicted Gomi of negligence in the guard’s death but acquitted him of illegal possession of an explosive device.
The king decreed a “special clemency” for Gomi, endorsing a Cabinet decision adopted last week, the official Petra news agency said. Gomi had asked for a pardon.
In Tokyo, Mainichi Shimbun issued a statement Monday thanking the king, expressing sorrow for the victims and apologizing for the blast.
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