NAIROBI // It was a cold, grey morning on Aug 7 1998, and Joash Okindo had bundled himself in his jacket to fight off the chill as he stood guard at the entrance of the US Embassy's underground parking garage. At about 10.30am, a lorry carrying three men and a covered payload came racing down the alley between the five-storey embassy and the Co-operative Bank of Africa next door. A man jumped out waving a gun and screamed at Mr Okindo to open the gate.
The self-possessed Mr Okindo lied to the man and told him he did not have the key. He urged the man to be patient while he called for a guard to bring the key. "I said, 'If you kill me, I will lay like a stone and I will not be able to help you. Wait here for the key, and I will open it for you'," Mr Okindo said recently. Mr Okindo dialled the US marine post at the main entrance, but the line was busy. Meanwhile, the man with the gun grew impatient. He threw a stun grenade and Mr Okindo ran for cover. Seconds later, the lorry exploded.
"It was a big blast," Mr Okindo said. "A wall came down and broke my legs." The explosion ripped through the side of the downtown embassy and took out two adjacent buildings. The Nairobi attack and a nearly simultaneous bombing at the US Embassy in Dar es Salaam, the Tanzanian capital, killed 224 people and wounded more than 5,000 others. Still, if Mr Okindo had allowed the attackers into the parking garage, the blast could have proved far deadlier. He was later given a medal for heroism by the US State Department.
"There was no way I was going to open that gate," said Mr Okindo, who was flown to Germany for treatment of his injured legs. For Kenya and the rest of the region, the consequences of the bombings have endured. At the core of the planning for the attack were three men who had moved to Kenya four years earlier, according to US prosecutors: a Lebanese Christian who had converted to Islam, ran a refugee centre in New York and became Osama bin Laden's personal secretary in Sudan; a Saudi-born Palestinian who had trained Somali militias fighting US troops in the early 1990s; and an alleged explosives expert born in the Indian Ocean islands of Comoros who had learnt his trade in former mujahideen camps in Afghanistan.
Although the attackers were able to take advantage of some of the lax law enforcement that afflicts Kenya, many Kenyans resented the US presence, which they viewed as the cause of their suffering. Daniel arap Moi, president at the time, pointed out on the first anniversary of the bombing that most of the victims were people "whose universe does not extend beyond Kenya's borders". The resentment was compounded by the issue of compensation for the victims, by far a majority of whom were Kenyan. Families of the victims sued the US State Department for ignoring security warnings in the lead up to the bombing. They sought millions of dollars in compensation and have only received a fraction of that to date.
"This being the 10th year, nothing has changed in that there is no support from so many angles [such as] the Kenyan government, the American government," said Paul Wala, head of the Victims' Association. "We blame them [the United States] for the bombing. Without their embassy being here in Kenya we would not have been bombed," he told Agence France-Presse. The FBI investigation into the bombing revealed that a Nairobi-based al Qa'eda cell had been planning the attack for years. Four suspects, including Mohammed al Owhali, who drove the lorry and waved the gun at Mr Okindo, were arrested and tried in federal court in the United States. They are serving life sentences.
After the bombing, international law enforcement focused on the Kenyan coast and its large Muslim population, which was thought to be a breeding ground for Islamic fundamentalism. Kenyan authorities have rounded up and extradited 140 suspected terrorists, according to Amnesty International. Some of the suspects have been sent to the US and are being held at Guantanamo Bay. The alleged explosives expert from the Comoros, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, who is high on the US terrorist list with a reward of US$5 million (Dh18m) for his capture, eluded being caught just this week.
Today there is a memorial park on the site of the former embassy. A wall displays the names of those that died on that day 10 years ago. Julius Kinuthia works in the park visitor's centre. His father's name is on the wall. "We can't let something like that happen again," said Mr Kinuthia, who was 13 when his father died in the office building next door to the embassy. Doreen Ruto lost her husband in the blast, and has spent the past 10 years raising two sons alone. She testified at the trial of the bombers in New York. That process helped her cope with her loss.
"Those people have no idea the kind of suffering they caused," she said. "I left the courtroom and broke down. Then I told myself I'm not going to cry any more. That's when I dealt with my anger." Ms Ruto started a conflict resolution consulting company and has given seminars to survivors of war in Rwanda, Sudan and the political violence in Kenya. In 2000, she counselled family members of victims of the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City.
"For me, Aug 7 is a time of reflection," she said. "I mark it as a special day of celebration rather than a day of mourning. The kids have grown, and we are moving on with our lives." @Email:mbrown@thenational.ae
