Death penalty demanded for Amrozi

Death penalty demanded for Amrozi

Wahyoe Boediwardhana, The Jakarta Post, Denpasar, Bali

In an exhausting eight-hour-long court session on Monday, state
prosecutors gave the public what they wanted to hear by asking
the judges to sentence Amrozi bin Nurhasyim to death for his role
in organizing the deadly Bali bombings.

"We believe the defendant has been legally proven guilty
beyond all reasonable doubt of planning and conducting terror
attacks that created an atmosphere of terror and anxiety, and of
forcibly and unlawfully taking away the rights and lives of other
human beings through an act of mass murder.

"Therefore, we request that the court sentence him to death,"
chief prosecutor Urip Tri Gunawan told the Denpasar District
Court.

The death penalty request produced no change on Amrozi's
demeanor. He looked very calm and relaxed, softly stroking his
beard as if deep in thought.

He remained unmoved when, right after the session was
adjourned, a middle-aged foreign man suddenly stood up in the
public gallery and shouted out angrily in broken Bahasa: "Die,
Amrozi!", to which Amrozi responded with a grin.

It turned out later that the man was Spike Stewart. His son,
Anthony Stewart, was one of the 83 Australians who perished in
the bombings.

At least 202 people, mostly foreign tourists, were killed in
the attacks on the Sari Club and Paddy's Cafe in Kuta.

The trial itself has turned out to be something of an
anticlimax, if not actually boring, with the team of six
prosecutors spending most of the time taking turns reading out
the 269-page-thick sentence request, which was heavily laden with
repetitions and technical terms.

At several times during the trial, the defendant's irritated
lawyers tried in vain to cut short the reading.

The prosecutors apparently did not want to leave out any
important details so that they read out once again the entire
summary of the testimony presented by the 55 witnesses who
appeared before the court.

In their sentence request, the prosecutors elaborately
presented documents, forensic analyses and factual analyses,
which they claimed proved that Amrozi had violated Articles 14
and 6 of the antiterrorism law.

Amrozi is alleged to have procured the minivan and the
substances used to make the explosives that were later used in
the bombings. He admitted this role during the trial, but he
vehemently denied charges that he had played a part in planning
or organizing the attack.

"Playing the role of planner would be over my head. I am just
an uneducated man," he once told the court.

The trial will resume on July 14 to hear the defense's
response to the sentence request.