Jordan king pardons ‘souvenir bomb’ photographer

JORDAN’S King Abdullah II yesterday issued a decree pardoning a Japanese photographer who was sentenced to 18 months in jail for the explosion of an Iraqi war memento that killed an airport security guard, a court official said.

“The king issued a special royal decree to pardon the photographer, Hiroki Gomi, after a recommendation made by the government,” a court official said.

A spokesman for Mr Gomi’s employer, Mainichi Shimbun, said the newspaper was now hoping for Mr Gomi’s quick release and return to Tokyo.

“The king signed a document pardoning Hiroki Gomi and we are now waiting for a formal notification from the royal court and word on his release,” said Takuya Kishimoto, the Mainichi London bureau chief currently in Amman.

Jordan’s state security court sentenced Mr Gomi to 18 months in jail on June 1 after a May 1 explosion killed an airport security guard as the photographer was returning from covering the war in Iraq.

Security guard Ali Sarhan was killed while he examined a cluster bomblet that was found in Mr Gomi’s luggage through a metal detector, as the photographer prepared to board a flight to Cairo on his way to Tokyo.

Five other people were injured in the explosion for which Mr Gomi and his employers have apologised profusely. Mr Gomi, 31, brought the cluster bomblet from Iraq as a war souvenir thinking that it was spent and would not explode.

The state security court, a military tribunal, that tried Mr Gomi cleared the photographer of responsibility for “the illegal possession of an explosive device”, a charge which can carry a jail term of up to 15 years.

But he was sentenced to 18 months in prison for “causing the unintentional death” of Sarhan at Queen Alia International Airport after an initial verdict jailing him for three years was dropped.

The court opted for the lesser sentence when the family of the victim decided to waive their personal rights in the case and because Mr Gomi is a foreigner, judicial sources said at the time.

Mr Gomi’s Jordanian translator, Abdel Salam Helwa, who also faced trial for possession of an illegal explosive, was cleared of any wrongdoing and ordered freed from prison.