BREAKING: Henry Okah Found Guilty of 2010 Independence Day Bomb Attack

Henry Okah

A South African court on Monday convicted Nigerian national Henry Okah of 13 terrorism charges, including bombings that killed 12 people in Abuja on independence day 2010.

“I have come to the conclusion that the state proved beyond reasonable doubt the guilt of the accused,” said Judge Nels Claassen, handing down the verdict in the South Gauteng High Court.

Okah was found guilty of masterminding attacks including twin car bombings that killed 12 people in Abuja on October 1, 2010 and two explosions in March 2010 in the southern Nigerian city of Warri, a major hub of the oil-rich Delta region.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), a group fighting for a greater share of the Delta oil wealth, claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Okah denied involvement in the blasts and said the charges were politically motivated.

He also denied leading MEND, but had said he sympathised with their goals.

However the South African court found Okah was the leader of the movement after uncovering documentary evidence including his wife’s handwritten notes.

Judge Neels Claassen said Okah, who was accused of leading the militant MEND group in Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta, was found guilty on 13 counts ranging from conspiracy to commit terrorism to detonating explosives.

“The evidence that was given by his accomplices was not contradicted,” Claassen told the court in Johannesburg.

MEND, or the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, carried out numerous attacks on oilfields and pipelines across the swampy region, which is home to Africa’s biggest oil and gas industry, until a government amnesty in 2009.

At its peak, the insecurity was costing the OPEC member nation and Africa’s biggest oil producer $1 billion a month in lost revenues, according to the central bank.

Security experts  have always believed that Okah – who accepted the 2009 amnesty after gun-running and treason charges against him were dropped – was at one time the intellectual  machine  behind MEND .He denie ever being its leader.

Claassen said Okah, who moved to South Africa after the amnesty and was arrested there, would be sentenced on Jan 30.

The 2010 blasts hit the official celebrations laid on in Abuja for Nigeria’s 50th anniversary of independence.

A MEND statement signed Jomo Gbomo, the pseudonym used by the group to claim previous attacks, was sent to  media houses  shortly before the explosions, telling people to evacuate the area.