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| Middle East |
| Man Jailed for Airport Explosion |
| 2003-06-04 |
| Reuters: "Oddly Enough". A Japanese journalist was jailed for 18 months for blowing up a Jordanian airport security guard as he tried to show that a souvenir cluster bomblet from the Iraq war was harmless. Here...catch. Oh-oh. The state security court Sunday sentenced Hiroke ("Dumbass") Gomi, 36, a photographer for Japan's Mainichi daily, to a reduced 18-month sentence after dropping charges of possession of explosives — an offence punishable by up to 15 years. Gomi was convicted on a lesser count of causing unintentional death and inflicting bodily harm in the blast at Amman's international airport on May 1 that killed Sergeant Ali Sarhan and wounded four others. Chief judge Colonel Fawaz al-Baqour said Gomi had behaved recklessly in seeking to prove to the security guards that the bomblet was safe before handing it over. "Instead of acting in a proper way to hand the bomb immediately to security without tampering with it, he began to toy with it to persuade them it was disused without taking the least precautions," he said. Bright boy. "Although the court realizes he possessed explosives, it was clear he was not aware he was carrying any live explosives," he said. Gomi, who has covered Iraq for over a decade for his large circulation daily, found the cluster bomblet near a road in Iraq not knowing it was still active. Duh, I found this thing on the ground. Duh, I think it's a superball or something... It was detected in his luggage by an X-ray machine as he prepared to board a flight en route to Tokyo. That could've been an interesting flight. A charge of premeditated murder was dropped after the president of Gomi's newspaper met King Abdullah to personally apologize. Sarhan's family also limited their claims to financial compensation. Think this shows how up on military matters the media is? A cluster bomblet for a souveneir. Guess he couldn't fit a 105 round in his luggage? |
| Posted by:tu3031 |