Reported by
Faridah N Kulumba
The 400 victims of the 1998 US Embassy bombing in Nairobi have sued the government of Kenya for failing to stop the attack. They are accusing the government of Kenya of laxity and negligence over its failure to pre-empt the attack.
The victims led by George Ngigi and Kituo Cha Sheria, sued Kenya saying that it failed to halt the smuggling of money that was used by Al Qaeda to finance the attack, despite having prior knowledge, as The Star reported.
The 1998 Attack in Nairobi
According to the U.S Department State in Kenya, Friday August 7, 1998 was another beautiful day but the beauty was marred by terrorist bombs that exploded at the U.S embassy in Nairobi killing more than 200 people and 400 were injured.
The U.S Embassy in Nairobi sat on one of the busiest and most important street corners in the city, constantly filled with parades, demonstrations, protests and the perpetual cacophony of the notorious Nairobi traffic.
The Embassy supported a number of other embassies and consulates in the East African region, and shared a parking lot with several other buildings. The attackers drove their pickup into the parking lot insisting that they had a special delivery for the embassy loading dock, which later turned into hundreds of pounds of explosives.
Victim’s petition
The victims explained that the masterminds lived in an apartment in Nairobi where they set up a makeshift laboratory for developing their surveillance photographs and where leaders based in or travelling to Kenya sometimes met.
“In August 1997, before the U.S embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the FBI and the Kenya police raided the house of one Wadih El Hage in Nairobi who was the terrorist on site manager and found a very disturbing letter on his computer hard drive, which outlined the presence of Bin Laden cell in Nairobi and his call to kill Americans,” said the victims.
The victims say that although the government of Kenya had some information and entire planning about the attack, they failed to avert it. “They failed to ensure our security by failing to beef up security at the Kenyan borders and to vet all persons coming into the country as is expected of a country exercising due diligence,” they say.
The victims petitioned the court to declare that the government of Kenya failed to take the necessary steps to detect, prevent and avert the bombing. They also seek an inquiry into the 1998 U.S embassy bombing to foster accountability within the security establishment and avoid repetition of a similar attack.
In an affidavit, the victims argue that there is no record of security officials or institutions being held to account for their failure to detect and stop the 1998 bomb blast attack, despite having sufficient intelligence.
In 2019 the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case about billions of dollars awarded by a court to victims of the 1998 bombing of the U.S embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, in Tanzania. They sued Sudan, arguing that it caused the bombings by providing materials support to al-Qaeda.
According to VOA a trial court awarded approximately $10.2 billion damages including approximately $4.3 billion in punitive damages, but an appeals court overturned the punitive damage award.
But in December 2020, the Supreme Court sided with the families of the victims of the 1998 U.S embassy bombings, clearing the way for their lawsuit against the government of Sudan over its alleged support of al-Qaeda and and complicity in the attack.
