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.