KUWAIT CITY, 28 June 2004 — A criminal court yesterday sentenced a Kuwaiti to 15 years in prison for attempting to kill 21 US soldiers and scores of Asian workers last year, his lawyer said.
Ali Nasser Al-Ajmi was convicted of firing on two US military convoys in December, slightly wounding four soldiers, and on a bus carrying Asian workers, wounding at least five of them, Osama Al-Munawer said. He was also found guilty of illegal possession of arms.
The same court fined Mohammed Abdullah Al-Ajmi 2,000 dinars ($6,780) for selling the weapons used in the attacks.
Munawer said he would appeal against the verdict. “My client was not given the proper opportunity to defend himself. He is a psychiatric patient and has been receiving treatment in hospital for the last two years. The court refused to hear his doctor’s testimony,” the lawyer said.
On June 5, the criminal court sentenced two Kuwaitis to five years in prison and a third to four years after convicting them of links to the killing of a US Marine in October 2002, when the two Kuwaiti assailants were also gunned down.
The same court on May 31 sentenced Egyptian truck driver Lutfi Al-Barbari to five years in prison for trying to kill 13 US soldiers at the height of the US-led invasion of Iraq in spring 2003. Some 25,000 US troops are based in Kuwait, which served as the main launchpad for the invasion.
