Kaendi has joined a steady stream of blind, maimed and disfigured bombing victims seeking restitution from Washington. With big money potentially at stake, American lawyers are fighting fiercely for their business. None is more prominent–or more controversial–than John Burris, an African-American civil-rights lawyer from California. (Because foreign attorneys are not permitted to practice in Kenya, they work in conjunction with local lawyers; the Kenyans manage the clients, and the Americans file the claims.) Burris and his partners have already filed more than 90 claims with the U.S. Departments of State, Justice and Defense, seeking individual damages ranging from $112,000 to $1.2 million. So far, they have 2,500 clients–and more are signing up every day. Burris says if their claims are rejected, he’ll take Uncle Sam to court. “Left to its own devices, the government will try to get away with [paying] as little as possible,” he says. “If these were Americans or Europeans, they would not be so easily dismissed.”
Does Burris have a case? He is planning to use the government’s own Accountability Review Board report, submitted in January, to prove that Washington was negligent. It found that despite persistent warnings from Ambassador Prudence Bushnell the Nairobi embassy was vulnerable to terrorism and the State Department refused to upgrade security or relocate the embassy. Furthermore, says Burris co-counsel Gerald Sterns, the embassy violated its own security rules by failing to train guards to deal with car bombs and by refusing to move the perimeter barricade farther from the building. “People ask, ‘How can you sue anybody because of terrorism?’ " says Sterns. “From a legal point of view, terrorism is no different from a faulty part. If you can anticipate it, you have to guard against it.”
Washington denies responsibility. “We didn’t blow ourselves up,” says an American official in Nairobi. U.S. officials say that compensating the victims of a terrorist attack would set a dangerous legal precedent. “Federal agencies could be bombarded with all sorts of claims, and the federal courts could be shut down,” says a government lawyer in Washington. In any case, as the U.S. Agency for International Development points out, Washington has already paid $5.4 million for reconstructive surgery, physical therapy and psychological counseling for the Kenyan bomb victims. The U.S. government recently paid to fly Rosemary Bichage home from Germany after she had surgery for extensive injuries and massive burns. USAID is now considering flying her to America to rebuild her jaw. Officials insist such gestures constitute not compensation but humanitarian aid, “like for a hurricane or drought,” says one. Burris calls it “a drop in the bucket.”
Burris’s record is not flawless. In 1996, the California bar suspended him for 30 days for sending out mass mailings to disaster victims. The Kenyan press has lambasted Burris as a predatory “ambulance chaser” and warned bombing victims to stay away. Burris, who represented Rodney King in his civil case against the city of Los Angeles after his brutal beating by police was captured on video, insists that he is helping the Kenyans out of “moral obligation.” But Frank Njenga, a psychiatrist hired by Burris to conduct mental evaluations of some of his clients, accuses the lawyer of being self-serving. “The impression he gave me was that he sees the opportunity to make money for himself, and possibly for some Kenyans.”
The stakes are huge. Many American lawyers have agreed to take on clients in exchange for 25 percent of whatever they get from the U.S. government. Though such contingency deals are illegal in Kenya, they are legal in America, where the cases will be tried. Sterns says he hasn’t “seen lawyers parachuting in here.” But he concedes that he was rushed into filing claims with the State Department in January after another U.S. firm, Washington-based Musolino & Dessel, filed a class-action suit on behalf of Kenyan bombing victims, naming as defendants the U.S. government as well as suspected terrorism financier Osama bin Laden, Sudan and Afghanistan. “If the court says that the U.S. government has no responsibility [in Musolino’s case], then we’re in trouble,” Sterns says.
But the real victims of any protracted legal wrangling will be the injured Kenyans. U.S. officials say the money already appropriated for aid (totaling 40 million dollars) could be frozen if the cases get to court because the government will be less inclined to help Kenyans who are suing it. “There are people who need surgery now,” says Gregory Gottlieb, USAID emergency coordinator. “What if these [cases] drag on for two years?” Nancy Kinuthia, for one, can’t wait. She was pregnant with her eighth child when her husband, Simon, a clerk in the Ufundi Cooperative building, was killed in the blast. The unemployed 38-year-old spent most of her $11,000 grant from the Kenyan government to pay for Simon’s funeral, living expenses and her children’s school fees. By next month the money will be gone, she says, nursing her newborn in their one-room home filled with pictures of Jesus and Mary. “The U.S. should help me because I have children,” she says.
So far, most bombing victims have expressed disappointment in what they see as American callousness to their ordeal. “After the blast, the American rescuers refused to help [anyone outside the embassy],” says Purity Kimathi, a 29-year-old Kenyan accountant who has been clinically depressed since her office next to the embassy was destroyed. “They have a duty to at least clear their bad name.” Rosemary Bichage says the greatest kindness she has received so far was from the Germans, who treated her for free “even though it was not their embassy that was blown up.” She is planning to sue the U.S. government. At least one U.S. official is less than surprised by the Kenyans’ reaction. “The American perspective is: you get blown up, you take somebody to court. If you win, great, but you try,” he says. “Why should the Kenyans be deprived of that relief?” For many, there is precious little else to cling to.
