Kenyan court dismisses compensation claim by victims of 1998 Nairobi bombing

By Rédaction Africanews with agencies

A Kenyan court has dismissed a compensation claim by the families and victims of the August 1998 bombing of the United States embassy in Nairobi.

Over 200 people, including 12 Americans, died in the attack and thousands of others were wounded, most of them locals.

A nearly simultaneous blast took place in front of the US Embassy in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.

Dismissing the petition on Wednesday, the court said there was not sufficient evidence to support the petitioners’ claim that the government had failed to act on prior intelligence about the attack.

Judge Lawrence Mugambi said they had also alleged that there were known border and immigration failures that allowed infiltration by dangerous elements without detection.

“The petitioners were required to demonstrate, on a balance of probability, that specific intelligence existed and that the government failed to act on it,” he said.

Mugambi agreed that the state must take “positive steps to prevent violations of the right to life”.

But he added that these “violations of constitutional rights against the state depended on proof of this primary fact”.

The United States government has already compensated relatives of its nationals who died or were injured in the blast — in excess of $5 billion.

Local victims have decried the injustice.

Mike Kitivo who is a member of a consortium of victims of the 1998 bomb blast, said they were “truly disheartened” by the judgement.

“For close to three decades, these men and women you’re seeing over here and elsewhere have been waiting for justice to be served. We are very disappointed,” he said.

The group said it will now turn to the Court of Appeal and the International Criminal Court of Justice.

They are hoping they may be awarded compensation from countries whose banks financed al-Qaeda’s terrorist activities.