Victims describe their pain and prisoners apologize in Bali bombing trial

Relatives of tourists killed in the 2002 terrorist bombing in Bali, Indonesia, spoke of endless, devastating grief, and two prisoners who conspired in the attack renounced violence in the name of Islam on Thursday, allowing a US military jury in Guantánamo Bay met to deliberate their views. sentence.

The detainees, Mohammed Farik Bin Amin and Mohammed Nazir Bin Lep, both Malaysians, pleaded guilty last week to war crimes for conspiring with an Al Qaeda affiliate that carried out the attack. The bombings killed 202 people from 22 countries.

“No God of any religion rewards such heinous acts,” said 18-year-old Solomon Lamagni-Miller from London. He was born after his uncle, Nathaniel Dan Miller, 31, was killed in the bombing and read a statement written by the victim's mother, his grandmother.

Christopher Snodgrass of Glendale, Ariz., said the loss of his daughter, Deborah, 33, in the bombings and other “terrorist activities worldwide” made him despise “more than 20 percent of the world's population, Muslims.” I am a religious person, and the hateful person I have become is certainly not what I wanted.”

Echoing the sentiment of several family members, he appealed to the jury to “deal with these murderers in such a way that they cannot do to others as they have done to us.”

This week, fathers, mothers, a brother and three sisters of the victims gave hours of anguished descriptions of searches for missing relatives, of life-changing burns and of the vacuum left by the deaths of young people who had gone on holiday to Bali and never came home.

Two of Mr Bin Amin's older brothers tearfully asked the jury for leniency. Subsequently, both defendants renounced their terrorist pasts, apologized to the families and said they had been tortured while in the CIA's secret overseas prison network between 2003 and 2006.

The men were captured in Thailand in June 2003. A U.S. military jury hears the case and decides on a sentence of 20 to 25 years, but cannot award credit for time served. However, there is a secondary, secret agreement under which the men could return to Malaysia later this year.

Mr Bin Amin's brothers flew from Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, and sat in the public section of the spectator gallery, where a blue curtain separated the relatives of the dead from the United States, Britain and Germany.

The eldest brother, Fadil, 62, an architect who trained in Birmingham, England, sadly told the court that his mother taught all 10 of her children a peaceful form of Islam. “He somehow got sidetracked” and made bad choices, he said.

In the stand was Matthew Arnold, who traveled to Guantanamo from his home in Birmingham and testified that his brother Timothy, 43, was in Bali for a rugby tournament when he was killed “by this atrocity.”

“The lives of my family have been completely changed by the actions of the perpetrators of this crime,” he said. “And I would like the court and Mr Bin Amin and Mr Bin Lep to be aware of the devastating consequences of their actions for so many innocent and decent people.”

Mr. Bin Amin, who hung his head from the defense table during hours of testimony, apologized to the victims, his family and “all Muslims. This is not what I was taught as a child,” he said.

During his twenty years in American detention, he said: 'I have changed. I'm not an angry young man anymore. I am a reformed person. My faith has evolved.”

As part of their plea deal, both men provided secret testimony earlier this week for the future war crimes trial of Encep Nurjaman, a prisoner known as Hambali, who prosecutors portray as a mastermind behind the 2002 and 2002 terrorist attacks in Indonesia. 2003. But both men said in their confessions that they had no first-hand knowledge of Mr. Hambali's role in the attack.

On Thursday, Mr Bin Amin continued.

“I didn't know anything about the Bali bombing until it happened,” he said, describing his role in the plot as helping some perpetrators after the bombing and assisting with money transfers that could be used for other attacks.

He showed drawings he had made of himself being tortured, but which have recently been released to show to the jury.

Col. George C. Kraehe, the prosecutor on the case, did not object to the artwork, which showed Mr. Bin Amin naked, hooded, handcuffed in painful positions and at one point held spread-eagle on a plastic tarp by masked guards, with one of the men shining. water in his nose and mouth.

Christine A. Funk, Mr. Bin Amin's lawyer, said the artwork on display was intended to help the jury “weigh appropriate punishment.”

Mr Bin Lep said he did not want the legacy of torture to “define who I am.”

He also said: “I forgive the people who tortured me.”

He admitted his crimes. “I am guilty of my role in the Bali bombing,” he said.

He described himself as “young, immature and stubborn” when he was deployed to Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001 to train with Al Qaeda.

“All I want now is peace,” he said. “I wish that peace for everyone here, but especially for the victims and their families.”