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Jury deliberations begin on bomber's sentence



By Phil Hirschkorn
CNN New York Bureau

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Jury deliberations began Thursday in the sentencing of a man convicted in the August 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

The seven woman, five man jury has two choices for Khalfan Khamis Mohamed -- the death penalty, advocated by the government, or life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The jury quickly asked U.S. District Judge Leonard Sand for a long list of exhibits when court reconvened at 9:30 a.m. Sand instructed the jury Tuesday before the Independence Day holiday.

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Mohamed, 27, was convicted on May 29 of participating in the August 7, 1998, truck bombing and of murdering the 11 people who died in the explosion. Trial evidence showed he rented a safe house where the bomb was built; purchased a car that ferried bomb components; helped grind TNT and load it onto the bomb truck; and rode with it part of the way to the embassy.

For two weeks, the jury heard additional testimony and evidence regarding Mohamed's punishment. The government focused on the impact of the deaths on the deceased victims' families and on Mohamed's potential to still pose a threat to the lives and safety of others.

Prosecutors tried to link him to a jailhouse stabbing last November that left a corrections officer critically wounded. Prosecutors argue Mohamed was an accomplice to his cellmate, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, who is charged with stabbing the guard. Defense attorneys argued the stabbing was all the other inmate's doing.

Mohamed's attorneys are asking the jury to consider a dozen reasons to vote against an execution. They say Mohamed was not a leader of the terror conspiracy and a minor participant in the bomb plot, and that other equally or more culpable conspirators don't face the death penalty.

comb knife
Mamdouh Mahmud Salim allegedly sharpened this comb into a homemade knife  

Defense attorneys say Mohamed's execution would cause his own family to suffer -- the defendant's mother and siblings flew in from Tanzania to testify -- and would make him a martyr.

The worry that an execution would justify future terrorist acts weighed on the jury in rejecting the government's plea for a death sentence against Mohamed al-'Owhali, convicted of killing 213 people by carrying out the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, just minutes before the Tanzania attack.

In that verdict, a number of jurors endorsed the view that life in prison would be more severe punishment than death by lethal injection, which they termed "very humane." The jury took four days to reach its verdict on al-'Owhali's sentence.



Greta@LAW





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