Kenyan victims of the US embassy bombing said yesterday that while they are happy with the verdicts handed down in a New York courtroom, they live in fear that terrorists may strike again.
Four followers of alleged master-terrorist Osama bin Laden were convicted on Tuesday of the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa that killed 224 people as part of the Saudi dissident's worldwide scheme to murder Americans.
The Manhattan federal jury's verdict marked the first US convictions based on crimes orchestrated by bin Laden, who was indicted as the mastermind behind the simultaneous bombings.
Two of the four defendants were found guilty of directly participating in the bombings that ripped through the embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and they next face separate trials to determine if they will be executed.
Barry Mawn, director of the FBI's New York office, said the verdict was also the first time a US jury had convicted individuals of killing Americans abroad through a terrorist bombing.
The jury of seven women and five men deliberated about 12 days before convicting Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-'Owhali, 24, Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, 27, Wadih El-Hage, 40, and Mohamed Sadeek Odeh, 36.
The first death penalty trial, which was scheduled to begin yesterday, will concern Al-'Owhali, a Saudi who confessed to riding in the truck used in the Nairobi bombing. Lawyers said they expect testimony in the case will last until the middle or end of next week.
"My suggestion is that they should be held for some time and they should give us more information about other terrorists, because we can be bombed again any minute," said Grace Biegon, 37, whose body is covered with scars from the Aug. 7 1998 bombing in downtown Nairobi.
"I think it could happen again. I have trouble sleeping at night and breathing, it is very scary."
Biegon is one of more than 5,000 people injured in the blast that occurred almost simultaneously with the bombing of the US Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The attacks left 224 people dead -- 12 Americans and the remaining Africans. About 85 people were injured in Dar es Salaam.
"I am very happy, justice has been done," said Charles Abiud, who was in a building that collapsed when the bomb exploded at the embassy next door. "These people should not be let go without severe punishment."
But opinion was divided about punishment for the convicted men. Two defendants were convicted Tuesday of counts that could carry the death penalty.
"Those people should be shot or hanged. After all, we are innocent people. Me, I was cut in the head and I suffer," said Jane Waithiar an office worker who still has nightmares about being caught in the rubble of the collapsed Kenya Cooperative Bank building, adjacent to the embassy.
But Bernard Kihima, a 40-year-old postal worker who was also injured, disagreed.
"I oppose the death penalty. If these people are held, then they can be rehabilitated and they can give more information about their group and they can be stopped," he said.
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