Bomb attack victims happy Fazul is dead

Photo/FILE

A woman prays at the August 7 Memorial Park in Nairobi.

She has no recollection of the events that led to the death of her husband 12 years ago.

Each and every bit of memory from that tragic event has been repressed and filed deep within her.

The memories are too painful for her to retell to her 16 year-old son. But today the two can finally let out a sigh of relief and celebrate a small victory.

“It may seem like a little thing to many. But to me, the death of Fazul Abdullah Mohammed gives peace to my soul.

“Although his death may be painful to someone close to him, to me it provides a closure of sorts,” said Ms Lucy Anyango Aringo, a victim of the 1998 Nairobi bomb blast.

She says that although it’s all in the past and she wouldn’t want to remember what happened that day, such occasions force her to go down a rather painful memory lane.

Mrs Anyango is one among the more than 4,000 survivors of the 1998 US embassy bombing in Nairobi that killed more than 218 people.

Another survivor Ali Mwadama, who is also the Bomb Blast Victims Association chairman says he is glad that some progress seems to have been made in the war against terror, but is not overjoyed by the news.

“It is good that the Americans are safeguarding their interests. At the end of the day I need to ask myself what this news means to me and the other survivors who were robbed of their livelihoods after the blast and what we gain from it,” he says.

Mr Mwadama adds: “I will wake up tomorrow and face the same struggles I faced yesterday. It is me against the world.”

He says he would have celebrated the news of the terrorist’s demise had the American government honoured its pledge to compensate victims of the 1998 attack.

“That would have made us sleep better at night. Not the death of Fazul in a neighbouring country,” he says.