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{
    "id": 1263199,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1263199/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 348,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Okiya Omtatah",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "When I was going in, I ran into an American Marine who was running around and he snatched me one of the torches that I had bought. Then we began evacuating people; a photographer captured me. Somebody later came to me with photographs of the event. So, 7th August 1998 was a day that is very close to my heart and I always tell myself, had I stopped to take that tea, I would not be here today. This is because, when we were trying to evacuate people, I went back to the Bell Bottom House and all those people that I had seen in that room were dead. I never got to the American Embassy. So, this is something that is long overdue. These were victims of a terrorist attack. They were not victims of their own doing. I have a friend called Mr. Sidialo. He was driving past and he went blind and there are very many victims who were there, who died on that day. So, for me, this Motion is long overdue, but I want to approach this question as one that has got legal foundations. There is something called the duty of care. The Americans knew very well that they were a high target and yet they came and located their embassy here in the heart of the city. Did they exercise the duty of care towards the Kenyan public? If I am walking past a place and I am attacked by a swarm of bees, I run into my friend, Sen. (Dr.) Khalwale, I pass and leave him with a swarm of bees; did I have a duty of care towards him? Should I have run towards him or should I have run away from him? So, the duty of care, for me, is what we should address also in this Motion, that Americans were well aware that their Embassy was a target but they never secured it. It was porous. It was in the heart of Nairobi and so they bear responsibility for what happened. On the other part, the Kenyan State which allowed that to happen, knowing very well that the Americans were a high-risk target--- We saw what the Israelis have been doing with their Embassy on Bishops Road when they were still there. They have now moved out and the road is now open but you could see the kind of security that they had around there. They know that they are targets. They are in an international war. So, they did not just come and plant themselves out there and let it be. So, we cannot talk of collateral damage. These people were being used as some cover or something, but the Americans have a responsibility to compensate them. In America, they came up with the Embassy Employee Compensation Act to take care of the victims of the bombings in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi and that Act has helped them. It is run along the same lines whereby they compensate people who suffer from terrorist attacks in aircrafts or wherever. They compensate for physical harm, economic losses and non-economic losses such as physical and emotional harm, loss of life, loss of enjoyment of life; anything that you can imagine they compensate for. The standards that they maintain in that Act are the standards that they apply when there is a terrorist attack anywhere in the world and their citizens are involved. The time has come when the Kenyan State needs to take action and demand that the victims have got a right to be compensated. This one has to be done consciously"
}