Survivors recount 1998 bomb horror at US trial

Two Kenyans have recounted to a New York courtroom the carnage they witnessed in the 1998 bomb attack on the US embassy in Nairobi.

Particularly graphic testimony came from George Mimba, who was working as an information officer at the embassy when it was destroyed by the blast.

“I knew my time was up,” Mr Mimba told a jury in the trial of a Tanzanian accused of working with al Qaeda’s East Africa cell.

“I was waiting for the moment that my soul would go,” he added in an account of his testimony by Courthouse News Service.

Mr Mimba was described as struggling with his emotions as he remembered seeing burned bodies that looked like “roasted chickens.”

Fr John Kiongo, a Kenyan Catholic priest, also recreated for the jury the scene at the embassy following a blast that took the lives of 200 Kenyans and 12 Americans.

He said he was in an office with his brother and niece when the bomb went off. Fr Kiongo was seriously injured, and both of his relatives died, he said.

Several Tanzanians were also called to the witness box on Wednesday as prosecutors sought to link defendant Ahmed Ghailani to the bombings that took place within minutes in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi.

Jurors were also shown videos of the aftermath of the two blasts. The scenes of death and destruction were intended to impress upon the jury the magnitude of the crimes that Mr Ghailani allegedly helped carry out.

Wednesday’s accounts were reminiscent of testimony and images presented in the same US federal court 10 years earlier.

Kenyan survivors were also brought to New York then as witnesses in the trial of four bombing conspirators who were subsequently convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.