Claim for US Embassy bombing dismissed

A Kenyan court has dismissed a compensation claim by the families and victims of the August 1998 bombing of the US Embassy in Nairobi, reports africanews. Over 200 people, including 12 Americans, died in the attack and thousands of others were wounded, most of them locals. 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 US Government has already compensated relatives of its nationals who died or were injured in the blast – in excess of $5bn. Mike Kitivo who is a member of a consortium of victims of the 1998 bomb blast, said they were ‘truly disheartened’ by the judgment. The group said it would 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.