INDONESIA/FILE: The families of three convicted Bali bombers meet with them for the last time before their execution

Record ID: 356054

  • Title: INDONESIA/FILE: The families of three convicted Bali bombers meet with them for the last time before their execution
  • Date: 30th October 2007
  • Summary: EXTERIOR OF BATU PRISON SIGN OF BATU PRISON
  • Embargoed: 14th November 2007 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
  • Reuters ID: LVA9R4KY8TNVLGYMYQ2Y0EBJ6KB
  • Story Text: Three Indonesian men convicted of the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings meet with their families at Indonesia's top security Batu Prison ahead of their planned execution.
    The three Indonesians sentenced to death for the 2002 Bali bombing, which killed over 200 people, said they were ready to be executed and their only regret was that Muslims died in the blasts.
    The three militants -- Imam Samudra, Mukhlas and Amrozi, who was dubbed "the smiling bomber" because of his constant grin during his trial, are being held at Indonesia's top security Batu Prison off the southern coast of Java.
    They met with family members on Monday (October 29) in what is likely to be the last such visit before they are executed by firing squad.
    The Bali bombers said that Indonesia's close ties to Washington and Canberra did not mean they had failed.

    "With the Bali bombings, we ensured that all CIA intelligence and the Mossad left Indonesia," Mukhlas, one of bombers, said to Reuters.

    "What we did was to fight the soldiers of zion and the cross," another of the bombers, Imam Samudra, added.
    The three men, wearing traditional Muslim skull caps, met with family members in the visitors' hall, watched by 20 security officers carrying rifles and surrounded by bulletproof glass. They appeared happy and in good health.
    The two blasts on Bali's Kuta strip on October 12, 2002, one at Paddy's Bar, the other at the Sari Club, killed 202 including 88 Australians and 38 Indonesian citizens, and devastated the resort island's tourist industry.

    "I was undercover at least for three months in Bali before the bomb for surveying and I saw with my own eyes that there were more then 10 infidels at Paddy's bar and the Sari Club and I saw how they treat the locals like dogs," Imam Samudra said.
    Amrozi, a motorcycle mechanic, his brother Mukhlas, and Samudra were the only three involved in the Bali bombings to be sentenced to death. While their lawyers have appealed the death sentence, the three men have said repeatedly that they are ready to face the firing squad.

    "In the past I have killed many with my bombs. I have been tested by spending time in this prison, but if you make infidels angry you will be rewarded. And soon I will enjoy the fruit of my deeds, if I get executed, God willing," Amrozi told Reuters during the three-hour visit.
    The attacks, blamed on Southeast Asian Islamic militant group Jemaah Islamiah (JI), were intended to scare away foreigners so that Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, could eventually become part of a larger Islamic caliphate.
    Instead, the series of bomb attacks in Bali and Jakarta pushed Indonesia into a closer security and intelligence relationship with the United States and Australia as the government sought help in tackling Islamic militants.
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