ARAB-US RELATIONS - Oct. 18 - Four Terrorists In Attacks On US Embassies Sentenced.

Wadih Hage, Khalfan Khamis Mohammad, Mohammad Saddiq Odeh and Mohammad Rashed Daoud Owhali, convicted in May of bombing US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on Aug. 7, 1998, in which 224 people were killed, are sentenced by federal judge Leonard Sand of the Federal District Court in Manhattan to life in prison without parole. Each of them is ordered to pay $33m in restitution to the victims of the bombings. (In May, Mohammad, 28, and Owhali, 24, were also convicted of murder in connection with the bombings. They faced the death penalty. According to the federal law, a sentence to execute the terrorists require a unanimous verdict by the jury, which could not agree on the death penalty). Mohammad, a Tanzanian convicted of helping to make the bomb and load it onto the truck that was parked outside the embassy in Dar es Salaam, says through his lawyer that he "wishes to express gratitude to a jury that spared his life". Owhali, a Saudi who rode the bomb vehicle to the embassy in Nairobi and tossed hand grenades before fleeing, refused his right to speak before the court. Odeh, 36, who was found guilty of aiding and abetting murder in the embassy bombings in Kenya, said: "I can only say to Allah we belong, and to him we'll return. God help me in my calamity, and replace it with goodness". During the trial, Odeh, who is from Jordan, argued that the US had provoked the terrorist attacks. His lawyer Ed Wilford said Odeh was a soldier in the military wing of Al Qaida who believed the attack was waged against the US because of its support for Israel. The fourth convicted terrorist, Hage, 41, addressed the court in a 30-minute speech. He told the judge he was an innocent law-abiding American and a devout Muslim who opposed violence, adding: "The killing of innocent people is radical, extreme and cannot be tolerated by any religion, principles or values". (In a hearing on Oct. 17, Hage's lawyers asked for a more lenient sentence because he withdrew from Bin Ladin's conspiracy before the 1998 bombings. The government acknowledged that Hage, a naturalised US citizen born in Lebanon, had no role in the bombings. But prosecutors said he led a double life, raising money for Bin Ladin's Al Qaida network and trying to smuggle weapons while rearing a family in Arlington, Texas).