Case in point: the motives of an embassy bomber:
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
|
Michel Moutot Agence France Presse June 4, 2001, Monday NEW YORK, June 4 Owhali's lawyers have already indicated they will make no attempt to justify what their client did, but will instead seek to provide the jury with an explanation of his motives. Should one member of the jury vote against the death penalty, Federal Judge Leonard Sand, presiding over the hearing, must hand down a sentence of life in prison without parole. Opening defense arguments in the penalty phase of the trial, David Baugh, one of Owhali's lawyers, chose to show a video of a 1996 CBS "60 Minutes" documentary on the effects of the US-backed embargo on Iraq.
Throughout the trial opposition to the embargo was presented as a key motivation that drove Owhali and three other followers of the alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden to take part in the the bombings of US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam on August 7, 1998. Owhali was convicted last week of murder in the Nairobi bombing in which 213 people died, confessing to assisting the driver of the truck carrying the bomb, and then throwing stun grenades at embassy guards to create a diversion before fleeing.
|
Entitled "Punishing Saddam," the documentary showed starving babies in Baghdad hospitals, empty shelves in street pharmacies and water-treatment plants unable to function. "It's not Saddam that suffers, it's his people," the CBS journalists commented in response to the images. Baugh then cited the 1950 Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians in times of war which specifies that infrastructure necessary for the survival of citizens must be protected, specifically drinking water installations. Among witnesses appearing for the defense was Ramsey Clark, a former US attorney general during the Lyndon Johnson administration in the 1960s who resigned in protest at the Vietnam War. Clark, a critic of US policy on Iraq, is a controversial figure who has spoken up for the perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and for Bosnian-Serb indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic. A frequent visitor to Iraq, Clark told the court of his meetings with Iraqi doctors who "tell you how they lose patients every day that they would not lose if they had simple medicine." He said that the often-repeated figure of 250 deaths of children each day in Iraq is "a low number." Concluding his testimony, Clark said that no member of a racial minority -- African-American, Arab or other -- can expect a fair trial in the United States. Judge Sand has indicted that the jury may begin deliberations on Owhali's fate by Friday. A sentencing hearing for Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, 27, of Tanzania -- also convicted of murder last week for his role in the Dar es Salaam bombing -- will follow. The two others convicted in the bombings trial, Lebanese-American Wadih el-Hage, 40, and Jordanian Mohamed Saddiq Odeh, 35, were found guilty of conspiracy and could face life in prison. Judge Sands has yet to rule on their sentences. |