FOUR AL QAEDA ACTIVISTS SENTENCED TO LIFE IN PRISON FOR US EMBASSY BOMBINGS

Judge Leonard B. Sand sentenced Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, Mohamed Rashed Al-´Owhali, Mohamed Sadeek Odeh and Wadih El-Hage in a packed courtroom under extraordinarily tight security in Old Federal Courthouse in Lower Manhattan, just a short distance from the smouldering ruins of the World Trade Center.
The four were found guilty of the near simultaneous attacks on U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on April 7, 1998, in which 231 people died, including 12 U.S. citizens.
Mohamed and Al Owhali could have been sentenced to the death penalty, but the jury, unable to reach a unanimous decision, decided instead on life imprisonment without parole.
“The decision of the jury to condemn Osama bin Laden’s followers to life in prison instead of death shows not only the unwillingness of the jurors to transform them into martyrs, but signals a turning point in American politics on the death penalty,” Hands Off Cain Secretary Sergio D’Elia said.
“Recently the Washington Post reported that this year may record the first decrease in executions since the re-introduction of the death penalty in 1976. This downtrend reflects public opinion’s decreasing support of the death penalty, which has in fact gone down by 20% in recent years, taking it to an all-time low over the last 20 years.
“This year 23 of the 38 American states that retain the death penalty have applied reforms following the disclosure of numerous cases of wrongfully convicted death row inmates. Thirteen states are currently considering imposing a moratorium on executions.
“Yesterday’s sentencing seems to shake the belief in the death penalty as the appropriate repressive instrument against a crime as terrible as terrorism.
“It’s not just innocents being condemned to death that has plunged into crisis the capital punishment system in the US, it’s the death penalty itself which is now being questioned.
“For bin Laden and his followers to understand the depth and the gravity of the evil they have inflicted , they need to think on it for the rest of their lives, not be put to death,” D’Elia concluded.