Key player in Bali bombings sentenced to death
Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, 41, was found guilty of planning and helping execute the bombings a verdict that could help end Indonesia's reputation as being soft on terrorists.
"The accused is found guilty in a legal and convincing manner of carrying out an act of terrorism," Judge I Made Karna said. After the verdict was read, Amrozi took off his Islamic cap, raised his arms and gave his lawyers the thumbs-up sign. Hundreds of people, including survivors of the bombings, cheered when the judge read the sentence.
As he was led out of the courtroom, Amrozi smiled broadly at Australian survivors, some of whom shouted back angrily. Australia lost 88 people in the attack.
Amrozi, a 41-year-old mechanic from the island of Java, has been called the "smiling bomber" because of his jocular manner and lack of remorse after his arrest last year. During a peer's trial, he grinned and yelled out "Bomb!" when asked about Tuesday's explosion in Jakarta.
The verdict came two days after another bomb exploded at the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, killing at least 10 people and wounding nearly 150. Both attacks have been linked with Jemaah Islamiyah, a shadowy
al-Qaida-linked terrorist group believed to be operating in Southeast Asia. If the Amrozi verdict is followed by similar convictions for other alleged bombers, Indonesia's notoriously inefficient judicial system could get a much-needed boost in its efforts to confront Islamic extremism.
"The Balinese people will be rejoicing today," said Julia Ika Setiani, a university student who attended the trial. "My family and my friends have suffered because of this grisly bombing."
Most of Bali's three million people are Hindu, unlike the rest of Indonesia's 207 million people who are predominantly Muslim. Several of the alleged bombers said they picked the venue to kill as many Westerners as possible to avenge the treatment of fellow Muslims in other parts of the world. Survivors and relatives of the victims of the Bali bombing felt that the death penalty will turn Amrozi into a martyr in the eyes of other radical Muslims.
Adelaide magistrate Brian Deegan, whose son Josh died in the blast, fears further repercussions if the execution is carried out.
"The thought of anybody dying whether by state or by any other form of murder in the name of my son is totally abhorrent to me," he said.
"I suspect that this will in many respects backfire and is going to create a lot more mischief and a lot more misery." In Britain, Susanna Miller, whose brother Dan died in the bombing, also said she regretted the death sentence.
"As Mahatma Gandhi said, an eye for an eye makes the world blind," she said.
"It should have been a life sentence it's a life sentence for all those who have lost relatives and who have been desperately badly injured by the bombing," said Miller, spokesperson for the British Bali Bombing Victims Group.
Others whose lives were turned upside down by the Bali nightclub bombings felt Amrozi got off lightly yesterday.
The 41-year-old mechanic was sentenced to death by firing squad for his role in the blasts that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians and 26 Britons. Many felt a sense of disappointment that, with a guilty verdict almost inevitable given Amrozi's admissions in court, he would not have to suffer more for what the judge called "crimes against humanity."
Trent Thompson, who lost his brother Clint and five team-mates from the Coogee Dolphins rugby club, said he just felt a "sense of emptiness" and would have preferred to see Amrozi rot in jail, living a "long and unhappy life."
"These prisons are not nice places," he said. But some, the relief to know Amrozi would experience the same fate as their loved ones was tangible.
Natalie Yuniardi, an Indonesian whose Australian husband died in the blast, came to court with her baby on her arms. She wept after the verdict was read. "I will only be happy when all of them are put to death," she said.
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