He confessed to bombing hotel but walks free

Omar Said Omar who confessed to bombing the Mombasa Paradise Hotel in 2002 but was set free on appealing his case.  [Photo: Maarufu Mohamed/Standard]

Mombasa, Kenya: When the Paradise Hotel in Mombasa was bombed and 15 people killed 12 years ago, the police were desperate to find any evidence to nail the Al-Qaeda terrorists responsible for the attack.

And they got the big break they had been praying for when they finally nabbed Omar Said Omar, who confessed that he had participated in the bombing when he was interrogated.

The world waited with bated breath, hoping to see justice being served when the prime suspect was finally arraigned in court. He was charged with the bombing of the Israeli-owned Mombasa Paradise Hotel on November 28, 2002.

He faced additional charges of trying to shoot down an Israeli airliner at Moi International Airport in Mombasa using a surface-to-air missile on the same day.

During the subsequent hearing of the case, the prosecution linked Omar to weapons recovered on August 11, 2003, from an apartment rented for Al-Qaeda operatives who masterminded the bombing.

He was jointly charged with Sheikh Aboud Rogo, Muhamed Kubwa and Mohamed Saleh Nabhan for the murder of 15 people killed in the attack.

On April 4, 2006, Senior Principal Magistrate Rosemelle Mutoka ultimately found him guilty of being in possession of five anti-tank weapons and a hand grenade without a firearms certificate after finding the prosecution’s evidence sufficient to convict. Mutoka believed the prosecution had adequately linked Omar to the weapons allegedly recovered on August 11, 2003, and sentenced him to eight years in jail.

On the charge of being terrorists, Omar and his co-accused were, however, acquitted by Justice John Osiemo on June 9, 2005. He said there was no evidence linking them to Al-Qaeda, which claimed the attack. He said the only evidence brought before the court linking them to the terrorist group was a telephone communication between them and Al-Qaeda mastermind Mohamed Abdullah Fazul alias Abdul Karim, who was then based in Somalia.

However, two years after his conviction, Justice Jackton Ojwang sitting in the High Court in Mombasa set Omar free and faulted the police over the quality of evidence presented in the court as it did not meet the standard of proof required by the law.

“The picture emerging from quality of prosecution evidence and from restless motions of police officers in their preoccupation with Omar is that of over-zealousness, which was not attended with professional investigation methods,” observed Justice Ojwang in his judgement dated September 16, 2008.

Omar’s acquittal has troubled many in Mombasa as he is believed to be an active Al-Qaeda member. It exposed the challenges police and the prosecution face when trying to convict dangerous criminals and lack of “commitment” by some judges and magistrates during such trials.

Police admitted that it was not easy to assemble evidence against this new type of crime and say judges fail to adopt or adapt new jurisprudence and methods used to convict terrorists in Western nations. The acquittal was a major boost for Al-Qaeda in East Africa.

Police insist they presented enough evidence and were puzzled when he was set free on appeal while at the High Court he and others were credibly linked to Fazul.

“We struggle a lot to arrest these people and when we have taken them to court, the judicial officers end up releasing them back into the society,” says a police officer involved in the trials and who insists Omar confessed to them that he was an active member of Al-Qaeda after receiving military training in Somalia in early 2002.

According to police records, Omar was born in 1973 in Mombasa and trained in information technology. He travelled to Somalia in 1998 to establish a lobster business with one Issa Osman Issa in Kismayu.

The business was apparently to hide his recruitment to Al-Qaeda and in 2002, he received military training in Somalia in preparation for the Paradise Hotel attack.

In Somalia, he was influenced by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, then leader of the defunct terror group Al ittihad al Islam, who radicalised him, according to his confessions to police.

He further confessed that Issa and Fazul recruited him for the Paradise bombing mission. He also told police he smuggled the surface-to-air missile from Somalia to bring down the airliner. He said he used the false name Issa Kombo Issa in the operation.

Omar was arrested in Mombasa on the same day he returned from Somalia after the hotel bombing while his accomplices were captured in Lamu. Under interrogation, he identified all the Al-Qaeda operatives involved in the hotel bombing.