Kenyan Court Acquits Man Alleged to be Plotting an Attack on Aircraft

A High Court in Nairobi on Tuesday released a man jailed since 2006 for illegal possession of five anti-tank weapons and a hand grenade that police alleged could be used to attack aircraft.

Omar Said Omar was jailed by a Nairobi Magistrate’s court in April 2006 just 10 months after he and four others were acquitted over the 2002 bombing of an Israeli-owned Kikambala hotel in the coastal town of Mombasa in which 15 people were killed.

The bombing of the Paradise Hotel in Kikambala occurred simultaneously with an attempt to blow up an Israeli airliner that had left the Moi International Airport in Mombasa, police said.

The attacks have been described as the most high-profile terror incidents in Kenya since the 1998 bombing of the United States embassy in Nairobi, which the al Qaeda network claimed responsibility for.

Making the ruling, Justice Jackton Ojwang’ said the police failed to link Omar Said Omar to the cache of firearms, and observed that when the weapons were recovered, Omar was in fact already in custody over the 2002 Kikambala hotel bombing.

The judge said that on August 2003, when police claimed to have recovered the weapons, Omar had been arrested and flown to Nairobi, whereas the flat where the weapons were recovered was in Mombasa and was raided by the police about eight days later.

Justice Ojwang also chided the police for carrying out a shoddy identification parade as no witness linked Omar to renting the house in which the explosives were discovered.

“The appeal is allowed, the conviction on all three counts is set aside, and sentence is quashed. The appellant shall be set at liberty forthwith, unless he is otherwise lawfully held”, the judge said.

Source African Press Agency

Net News Publisher