Kuwait Shooter Sentenced To Death

Ambushed Two American Contractors, Killing One, In January

(AP)  A Kuwaiti court sentenced a man to death on Wednesday for ambushing two Americans and killing one during the buildup for the Iraq war.

Sami Al-Mutairi, 25, had pleaded innocent to charges of murder and attempted murder for the Jan. 21 shooting of the two Americans, who were working under contract for the U.S. military in Kuwait.

Michael Rene Pouliot, 46, was killed and David Caraway, 37, was seriously wounded during the attack near Camp Doha, the main U.S. base in Kuwait.

Both were employed by a software company based in San Diego. The shooting was part of a string of attacks on Americans as U.S. troops and equipment poured into Kuwait in preparation for the invasion of Iraq.

Al-Mutairi's lawyer, Mohammed Minwer Al-Mutairi, said he would appeal the verdict.

The court also handed down prison terms for three other Kuwaitis it found to be accomplices to the crime.

Badi al-Ajami and Khalifa al-Dihani were each sentenced to three years in prison for providing Al-Mutairi with the gun used and bullets.

Abdullah al-Oteibi, who is still at large, was sentenced in absentia for training the defendant in the use of weapons.

A fourth defendant, also tried in absentia, was found innocent.

Prosecutors said Al-Mutairi had planned the attack carefully and waited behind a hedge for an hour before choosing his victims. He attacked the two Americans after they had left the base and while they were stopped at a traffic light.

In his court testimony last month, Al-Mutairi said he was forced to confess to the shootings.

In a police tape played in court on April 16, Al-Mutairi said: "I'm convinced of what I did ... I don't regret it."

Asked if he would do the same again if he were released, he replied: "Certainly."

Al-Mutairi testified that police had prepared the confession and forced him to read it in front of a video camera.

Al-Mutairi, who worked as a researcher at the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, fled to Saudi Arabia after the killing. He was arrested there and extradited to Kuwait.

The killing was the third attack against Americans in Kuwait since Oct. 8, when two extremists opened fire on U.S. Marines training on Failaka Island, killing one and injuring another.

A Kuwaiti policeman was recently sentenced to 15 years in jail for shooting two U.S. soldiers on a highway in November. He is not known to have any ties to extremists.

While Kuwait is a major U.S. ally in the Gulf, scores of its citizens fought and trained with Islamic groups in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Bosnia. Such extremists oppose the U.S. military presence in Kuwait, which an American-led coalition liberated from Iraqi occupation in the 1991 Gulf War.