NEW YORK
Several victims of
the 1998 US embassy bombings came to a New York courtroom on Friday with
high hopes of finally gaining compensation as a result of a
multibillion-dollar legal settlement ordered last year.
But
the Kenyans and Tanzanians who were working at the East African
embassies at the time of the attack left the federal courthouse bitterly
disappointed.
They had anticipated the US government
would agree to give them and hundreds of other embassy employees and
family members a share of the nearly $9 billion that a Paris-based bank
had forfeited for violating sanctions Washington had imposed on Sudan,
Iran and Cuba.
An assistant US prosecutor had said in
court last year that some of the money forfeited by BNP Paribas,
France's biggest bank, could go to those harmed by terrorist attacks
linked to the three countries.
Attorneys for more than
600 US embassy employees and their families affected by the attacks in
Nairobi and Dar es Salaam subsequently filed a petition for a share of
those funds.
US government lawyers announced in court
on Friday, however, that compensation claims could be filed, online,
only by those harmed in the period from 2004 to 2012. BNP had previously
admitted to violating US sanctions during those years.
"Total disappointment" was the reaction expressed by Marina Kirima in an interview with the Associated Press.
"It's
like starting all over again," said Ms Kirima, who was working at the
embassy in Nairobi when the bomb exploded 17 years ago.
James
Ndeda, a systems specialist employed at the US embassy at the time of
the attack, offered a similar response in his comments to the AP, a
US-based international news agency.
Referring to the
other East Africans attending the proceedings in New York on Friday, Mr
Ndeda told the AP: "As you look at these faces, they're all
disappointed. This process has taken too long."
BASE FOR PLANNING
The
Kenyans and Tanzanians who worked at the embassies in 1998 must now
look to US Attorney-General Loretta Lynch to rule in their favour.
Following
the US government's decision to limit claims to a period long after the
Nairobi and Dar attacks, compensation to this group of earlier victims
can reportedly be made solely at Ms Lynch's discretion.
Attorneys
for the East African embassy workers point to BNP's acknowledgment that
by 1997 — the year the US imposed sanctions on Sudan — it had become
the dominant European bank operating in Sudan. And other US court cases
related to the Nairobi and Dar attacks have established that Sudan was
used as a base for planning the embassy bombings the following year.
But
BNP has admitted in court to carrying out transactions on behalf of
sanctions-affected banks in Sudan only from 2006 to 2007.
A
key question to be addressed, according to the Bloomberg news agency,
is whether wire transfers facilitated by BNP beginning in 1997 were
related to preparations for the embassy attacks.
The
petition filed last year by the embassy victims' attorneys said
circumstantial evidence suggests that BNP may have been used as a
conduit for money that helped finance the attacks, the Bloomberg report
added.
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