Journalist Gets Jail in Jordan Airport Blast
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AMMAN — A Japanese journalist was jailed Sunday for 18 months for blowing up a Jordanian airport security guard as he tried to show that a souvenir cluster bomblet from the Iraq war was harmless.
The state security court sentenced Hiroke Gomi, 36, a photographer for Japan’s Mainichi daily, to the reduced 18-month sentence after dropping charges of possession of explosives.
Gomi was convicted on a lesser count of causing unintentional death and inflicting bodily harm in the blast at Amman’s international airport May 1.
Chief judge Colonel Fawaz al-Baqour said Gomi had behaved recklessly in seeking to prove that the bomblet was safe before handing it over.
Gomi had covered Iraq for more than a decade.
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