KUWAIT: A Kuwaiti appeals court upheld on Thursday the acquittal of eight Kuwaitis accused of plotting to bomb a US army camp in the Gulf Arab state, one of the defendants' lawyers said. In May, a criminal court found the men innocent of planning to bomb Camp Arifjan, a vast logistics base for the US military in the desert south of the capital. Authorities had previously said the plot was linked to al Qaeda. Kuwait is a major US ally, facing Iran across the Gulf. Some fundamentalist oppose the American military presence in Kuwait, and the US military has occasionally been the target of Al- Qaeda-inspired attacks, including a raid that killed one US Marine and wounded another in October 2002. The eight Kuwaitis were detained in August 2009. “They were all acquitted again,” attorney Adel Al-Abdul Hadi said. The prosecution could take the case to a higher court of appeals, he added. There was no immediate explanation of Thursday's ruling. Such clarifications usually come later. Camp Arifjan serves as a staging ground for troops serving in Iraq. Kuwait's position as a US ally in the region was cemented after the 1991 Gulf War that liberated it from a seven-month Iraqi occupation under Saddam Hussein. Kuwait later became the launch pad of the US-led invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam in 2003.
