Lawyers for the three Islamists facing execution for the Bali bombings that killed 202 people filed a desperate last-minute appeal yesterday to save them from the firing squad.
But prosecutors said the appeal was invalid as the bombers — Amrozi, 47, his brother Mukhlas, 48, and Imam Samudra, 38 — had already exhausted their legal options and must now die in line with their 2003 sentences.
“No more appeals can be accepted because the limit is only one,” a spokesman for Indonesia’s Attorney General’s Office said, even though the bombers have had at least three appeals considered by the Indonesian courts.
PHOTO: AFP
Lawyer Imam Asmara Hadi said the appeal filed in Bali’s Denpasar District Court rested on the bombers’ claim they had not been properly informed of the rejection of their previous petition.
“We have lodged an appeal because we haven’t received a copy of the Supreme Court rejection of our previous appeal,” Hadi said.
Police stepped up security around Cilacap port connecting southern Java to the high-security Nusakambangan prison island where the bombers are believed to be just days or even hours away from execution.
Heavily armed police extended a no-go zone around the port and barred all traffic to the island in the latest sign that the executions are imminent.
Security has been tightened across the mainly Muslim archipelago because of concerns about revenge attacks from Islamist fanatics and the Jemaah Islamiyah regional terror network, believed to be responsible for the Bali carnage.
The bombings of tourist nightspots on the resort island in 2002 killed more than 160 foreigners including 88 Australians, as well as 68 Indonesians.
Nusakambangan prison chief Bambang Winahyo said the bombers appeared to be calm and ready to die, in line with their repeated assertions that they want to be “martyrs” for their cause of creating a Southeast Asian caliphate.
“They’re in good condition, healthy. It seems they’re facing this calmly,” he said.
Relatives and lawyers were barred from visiting the bombers at Nusakambangan early yesterday as they did not have permission from Jakarta, officials said.
Ali Fauzi, the younger brother of Amrozi and Mukhlas, blasted the authorities for refusing to let him see the bombers for a last time. He said he would leave Cilacap later yesterday if permission did not arrive within hours.
“I’m very disappointed with the Attorney General’s Office for not allowing us to go in as my brothers have been put in an isolation room” ahead of their execution, he said.
“I want to pass a message from my family to Amrozi and Mukhlas. My mother said for them to be patient, to be sincere and to accept their fate.” He said.
“But she also said that if I can bring them home alive and free, then I should bring them home,” he said, laughing.
The 2002 Bali attacks were the bloodiest in a sustained period of al-Qaeda-inspired jihadist violence in mainly moderate Indonesia. Bombings at the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta in 2003, the Australian embassy in 2004 and Bali again in 2005, among others, killed scores of people.
Jemaah Islamiyah is still active in plotting attacks across the region and the alleged mastermind of the Bali bombings, Malaysian extremist Noordin Mohammad Top, is still at large.
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
‘VERY DIRE’: This year’s drought, exacerbated by El Nino, is affecting 44 percent of Malawi’s crop area and up to 40 percent of its population of 20.4 million In the worst drought in southern Africa in a century, villagers in Malawi are digging for potentially poisonous wild yams to eat as their crops lie scorched in the fields. “Our situation is very dire, we are starving,” 76-year-old grandmother Manesi Levison said as she watched over a pot of bitter, orange wild yams that she says must cook for eight hours to remove the toxins. “Sometimes the kids go for two days without any food,” she said. Levison has 30 grandchildren under her care. Ten are huddled under the thatched roof of her home at Salima, near Lake Malawi, while she boils
RSS