Latest Bali bombers go to court quietly
A glance skyward and cry of “Allah hu Akbar” were the only signs of defiance from four men who have faced court over last year’s Bali restaurant suicide bombings that killed 20 victims, including four Australians.
If convicted the men could be executed by firing squad.
One prosecutor said the attacks were aimed at avenging the deaths of Muslims killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
About 150 police, including black-clad anti-terror officers and elite presidential guards, stood guard at the Denpasar District Court when Muhamad Cholily, 28, Abdul Aziz, 30, Dwi Widiyarto, 34, and Anif Solchanudin, 24, were bundled out of an armoured car and into separate trials.
The passive behaviour of the accused contrasted starkly to the grandstanding four years ago at the trials of those behind the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.
At the time the defendants, now on death row, turned the proceedings into a spectacle, launching into religion-laden speeches and punching their fists in the air as details of the carnage they caused were read out in court.
Tuesday’s hearings, though, were restrained and quiet affairs.
There were no supporters in the public galleries.
The only people inside the courtroom were the judges, the lawyers, the accused, police intelligence officers, law students and journalists.
Gone too was the Islamic dress the first bombers wore.
Cholily was the only one have any sign of the uniform adopted by Indonesia’s Muslim extremists, with a brown skull cap crowning his baggy cargo pants, T-shirt and thongs.
Cholily, allegedly arrested carrying a bomb before leading police to the East Java safehouse of now dead Jemaah Islamiah master bombmaker Azahari Husin, looked bewildered. He smiled with his lawyers and fidgeted during his one-hour hearing.
But as he was almost hurled back into the police van he glanced to the sky and said “God is Great” before the heavy steel doors clanked shut.
In a second court, Abdul Aziz, accused of building a website instructing extremists how to carry out attacks against Westerners, looked intently at prosecutors as they read the indictment accusing him of taking part in an “evil conspiracy”.
All four men were charged with three sections of Indonesia’s tough anti-terrorism laws, with prosecutors accusing them of carrying out a terrorist attack, conspiracy and harbouring master terrorist Noordin Top, who is still on the run.
The youngest of the four, Anif Solchanudin, was also charged with offences under the 1951 Emergency Laws after police found 29 bullets in his possession.
The Denpasar District Court heard Anif volunteered to be one of the suicide bombers who blew themselves up outside three popular restaurants in Jimbaran Bay and Kuta last October, killing four Australians among 20 innocent bystanders.
Anif, dressed in a red, blue and white sports shirt said nothing during the trial, but according to the indictment believed that if he became a suicide bomber the gates of heaven would be opened for 70 members of his family.
The fourth man, Wiwid, allegedly made video recordings of the three bombers as they read out their final wishes, as well as a tape of Noordin Top wearing a balaclava threatening more attacks against Western interests.
Cholily’s lawyer Mudjito Rachman told the three-judge panel that when the bombings occurred his client had been in the central Java city of Semarang.
“He is not involved directly in a terrorism movement,” he said.
Lawyers for all four objected to detail in the prosecution dossiers, which they said was “blurred”.
The trials were adjourned until May 16.