Bali bombers screwed up
One of the convicted Bali bombers, Imam Samudra, has claimed the bombers had never meant to kill so many people. What happened at Paddy’s Bar and the Sari Club was “unacceptable”, he said. The second explosion was much bigger than they had expected, he said.
There were 202 people killed on the night of Saturday, October 12, 2002, when the crime planned by these men was carried out on the peaceful, mainly Hindu holiday island of Bali.
The first suicide bomber walked into Paddy’s Bar and set off a bomb in the middle of a crowd of customers. The second bomber waited for people to flee into the street then detonated the Mitsubishi, packed with more than a ton of explosives, outside the Sari Club.
I don’t know if Imam Samudra expects any sympathy over his admission that they hadn’t intended there to be so many people killed. Maybe if he was going to have second thoughts he should have had them before the attack …. perhaps testing their bombs in the Jemaah Islamiah’s own training camps first.
Apart from his reservations about the number of people killed, Imam Samudra seems unrepentant about his crimes. Of course he wasn’t to blame for the bomb being too powerful - the only explanation, he suggested, was that “the CIA or KGB or Mossad” had somehow tampered with the bomb. “It is very possible,” he claimed.
His targets, he said, were “anti Muslims, especially people from the USA, Australia, members of Nato, elements of what people call the alliance because they know it’s a crusader army”.
What would he say to the families of his victims?
“To Muslim people I would say pardon - but Muslims only. While the unbelievers - they must be entering into hell. Allah says to all unbelievers that this road will bring you to hell,”
One day soon, Imam Samudra and his fellow terrorists, Mukhlas and Amrozi, will get what they deserve ….the last words they will hear “ready, aim, fire”.
