Bomb suspect says sorry to families

A KEY suspect in last October’s Bali nightclub bombings apologised to the victims’ families yesterday and showed reporters how he and others allegedly assembled the explosives that killed 192 people, most of them foreign tourists.

Wearing a fake suicide bomb vest over his blue prison uniform, Ali Imron conducted a bizarre news conference at police headquarters and confessed to coordinating the attack on the Sari Club and Paddy’s Bar.

Imron boasted about his bomb-making skills and then voiced remorse for the carnage blamed on Jemaah Islamiyah, an al-Qaida-linked Islamic group.

“Our capabilities as Indonesians are something to be proud of, but they were used for a wrong purpose,” said Imron, who claimed he learned how to make bombs in Afghanistan and has admitted to helping plan the October 12 attack.

“I hope that there will be no more arguments about who really detonated the Bali bombs,” he said.

“In my heart, I regret this. I want to apologise to the victims’ families."

Investigators have rounded up 29 suspected members of Jemaah Islamiyah since the bombings, including Imron.

But they have struggled to convince a sceptical public that a group of Indonesians planned and carried out the bombings, despite confessions from many of the suspects.

As a result, detectives have staged a series of re-enactments since December aimed at showing how the attack was executed.

Yesterday, showed how his group allegedly built the bombs he strapped on a vest that featured eight mock pipe bombs with explosive chords connected to a detonator switch.

It was the device that one of the terrorists was wearing when he allegedly blew himself up inside Paddy’s. The first trials in the case are expected to begin next month in Bali, police say.