Australia calls happy Bali bomber 'sneerer'

Australia calls happy Bali bomber 'sneerer'

Agencies, Canberra

Australians were outraged on Thursday by images of a happy, joking Bali bomber confessing to police in Indonesia, condemning the smile of the Indonesian as proof the bombers were "bloodthirsty" and "sneering" people.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer lashed out at the images of the smiling, waving bomber -- televised across Australia and splashed across front pages -- as "ugly images" that would distress relatives of the nearly 200 people killed.

"I looked at him on television this morning, you know laughing and joking and waving, and I think to myself, how would I feel if one of my children, or another one of my family members or a loved one had been killed?" Downer told reporters.

"I think these people are so bloodthirsty. Their sort of ugly, sneering, amused attitude at the slaughter of innocent people, it's just horrific that there are people like that."

A fresh-faced Indonesian man identified only as Amrozi smiled and waved at reporters on Wednesday as he admitted being one of the Bali bombers. He told police of his delight at the attacks and said he went sightseeing in the days before the blasts.

Wearing police-issue shorts and a blue T-shirt with the word "detainee" splashed across his back, Amrozi looked relaxed as more than 100 reporters and cameramen watched the national police chief question the prime suspect in the attack.

Most of the more than 180 killed in the Oct. 12 nightclub bombings on the Indonesian resort island of Bali were holidaying foreigners, and up to 90 were Australians.

Australian opposition leader Simon Crean described Amrozi's public interrogation as bizarre and insensitive.

Laughing bomber on parade, ran the banner headline of The Sydney Morning Herald, while The Daily Telegraph put Amrozi's picture under a front-page portrait of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden with the headline: Evil speaks .... and so does his grinning puppet. Monica Sanderson, the mother of one of three rugby players from the same town who were killed in Bali, said the incident was beyond comprehension.

"It makes you feel sick and it makes you feel sad," Sanderson said. "Young kids on a holiday of a lifetime get killed, and these people carry on like that. It's unbelievable. It's just beyond comprehension."

Craig Salvatori, the former rugby league international whose wife Kathy was killed in the attack, said: ""If I worried about it, all it would mean is they (the terrorists) would be getting to me, they'd be on top of me, so I don't even want to know about it."

Prime Minister John Howard declined to comment when asked about the incident.

"I will leave commentary on the detail of the investigation to the Australian Federal Police," he said. "In the end what we all want is to get the people who did this and every effort and every expression should be directed to that end."