AMMAN, May 7 Kyodo (EDS: RECASTIN...

AMMAN, May 7 Kyodo

(EDS: RECASTING, UPDATING WITH POSSIBILITY OF RELEASE forward BAIL)

The bereaved family of an Amman airport security guard killed in last week's explosion of a cluster bomblet in the luggage of a photojournalist for Japan's Mainichi Shimbun newspaper said Wednesday they would like to give their consensus for him to be released onward bail.

The family of Ali al-Sarhan told Mainichi President Akira Saito, who visited them in Amman in succession Wednesday to pay his reverences of their wish to convenient with the lawyer of 36-year-old Hiroki Gomi as early as Thursday.

Gomi, a Mainichi photojournalist who had been covering the war in Iraq, is facing charges of illegal possession of explosives, intentional homicide, and damage to exclusive right from the May 1 explosion at Queen Alia International Airport caused by means of the bomblet he took from Iraq as a souvenir.

in subordination to Jordanian law, a petition from the victim's side requesting leniency for the defendant is a condition for a reduc tenet Three other people were injured in the explosion.

With the family's expression of their intent, Gomi might be released forward bail at the judge's discretion as early as around the time the case is sent to the military tribunal.

Gomi, who had jot downed Jordan overland from Iraq, was about to float from Amman airport for to one's home when the explosion occurred. He has claimed he reflection the object was already exhausted and would not explode.

Meanwhile, Muhanad Hijazi, the state security court prosecutor in charge of the case, has decided that the charge of possession of explosives is applicable to Gomi's Jordanian assistant.

The assistant admitted upon Tuesday he brought back to Jordan a bell-shaped end he had received from Gomi, which is also believed to be a cluster bomblet

Earlier forward Wednesday, Saito and other top executives of the Mainichi arrived in Jordan to apologize for the explosion and pay considers to al-Sarhan's family and others who were injured. Saito was also scheduled to fit with Jordanian Information Minister Mohammed Affash al-Udwan the same day and to have an audience with King Abdullah II onward Thursday.

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