JP/4/Bali

Bali lawmakers call for rapid execution of militants

The Jakarta Post Denpasar

The Bali provincial legislative council has sent a letter to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to push for an immediate execution of three death row inmates involved in the 2002 Bali terror attacks.

Council deputy speaker I Gusti Ketut Adhi Putra said on Saturday that the President was expected to instruct the Attorney General's Office to quickly execute Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, Imam Samudra and Ali Ghufron alias Mukhlas, the three Islamic militants who were sentenced to death by firing squad in August 2003 for their roles in the nightclub bombings the year before that killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists.

He was quoted by Antara as saying that there had been increasing calls from several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and leading public figures for the law enforcement agencies to immediately execute the three terrorists.

"They (NGOs and public figures) recently came to the secretariat of the Bali legislative council to demand that Amrozi, Samudra and Ghufron be executed immediately," said Adhi Putra, who recently visited the three on the prison island of Nusakambangan in Central Java.

The increased urgency for the execution follows the second terror bomb attacks on Bali in less than three years, the country's most popular resort island, on Oct. 1, which killed 23 including three suicide bombers.

Amid rising public pressure, several law enforcement personnel and legislators from Bali recently made the visit to Nusakambangan to ask the three whether they intended to request presidential pardons.

They, however, said they would not ask for a pardon and they refused to sign the papers necessary. According to one prosecutor who visited them, the three refused to seek a pardon, while asserting that pardons should only be "sought from Allah not from an earthly institution." They also said that the bomb attacks were carried out to avenge the deaths of Muslims in Israel and Afghanistan.

Adhi Putra said that the team of prosecutors, lawmakers and judges were planning to meet with the families of the three convicted terrorists to ask whether they would seek pardons on their behalf.

Indonesian law states that death row inmates cannot be executed until all legal avenues have been exhausted.