The Bali bombers’ Australian victims were torn yesterday on whether the men should face the firing squad, with some opposing the death penalty and others wanting to “pull the trigger,” reports said.
The impending executions of Amrozi, 47, Mukhlas, 48, and Imam Samudra, 38, have stirred strong emotions in Australia, home to 88 of the 202 killed in the attacks on the popular Bali nightclub strip in 2002.
Brian Deegan, a former magistrate who lost his 22-year-old son Josh in the attacks, is opposed to the death penalty, despite acknowledging the relief it could bring to some.
“People are being put to death, which I absolutely deplore,” he told the Australian newspaper.
His views were echoed by Gayle Dunn, whose 18-year-old son Craig died in the bombings on nightclubs packed with Western tourists, among the worst terror acts since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“I just think they’re getting what they wanted,” she told the Sydney Morning Herald. “They’re just going to become martyrs.”
Tracey Ball, who was seriously burned in the bombings, said there was no denying she would feel relief when the Islamic militants were finally executed, but that the issue of the death penalty troubled her.
“Prior to the Bali bombings, I don’t think I would have ever believed in the death penalty … but since having someone … try to kill me for absolutely no personal reason, it does change the way you think and feel,” she said.
“I’ve struggled with how I’ve felt. If I was offered to pull the trigger, would I do it? Sometimes yes, sometimes no,” she told the Australian.
But Kevin Paltridge, whose son Corey died in the blasts, was clear.
“I’d like to pull the trigger,” he told the paper.
The issue has also posed questions for the Australian government, which publicly denounces the death penalty but has said that justice has been served in the bombers’ case.
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said Canberra would continue to plead for the lives of Australians on death row in foreign prisons.
But he said: “We don’t make representations on behalf of nationals of other countries, and we certainly don’t make representations on behalf of terrorists.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS