JP/4/Bali
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.