The Guardian, Tuesday October 24, 2006
Anger over early release of Bali bomb prisoners
[PHOTO: Australian Peter Hughes shows his burn scars during the Bali bomb trial.
Photograph: AP]
Survivors of the Bali bombings - which killed 202 people four years ago - reacted with
anger today after two Islamist militants jailed over the attack were freed.
Mujarod bin Salim and Sirojul Munir, who were convicted of hiding two of the
masterminds of the suicide bombings, had up to 45 days shaved from their five-year
sentences.
Officials in Bali said the move was part of a series of sentence reductions for
thousands of prisoners to mark the end of Ramadan, the Islamic fasting month.
Nine other prisoners jailed over the bombings were among those who had their
sentences cut.
Indonesia traditionally cuts prison terms on national holidays for inmates who exhibit
good behaviour, usually reducing them by several months. The justice ministry said
more than 43,000 convicts benefited from the latest sentence reductions.
However, the decision to include convicted terrorists - a policy that the government
said earlier it was reconsidering - prompted anger from those affected by the attacks
on two crowded nightclubs in October 2002.
Peter Hughes, an Australian who suffered burns to 54% of his body, said: "After what
I've survived, to see these people get rewarded ... it's something we westerners just
don't understand.
"I hate to think what the families of the victims who died are going through."
Bin Salim walked free from the main prison on Bali island this afternoon, said Ilham
Jaya, the prison warden, and Munir left the jail in East Kalimantan's capital of
Balikpapan several hours earlier.
"I'm happy that I'll be able to spend time with my family again," said Munir. He
claimed he had nothing to do with the attacks and said he was praying he would not
be stigmatised by his time in jail.
Nine other militants convicted of relatively minor roles in the bombings - from
withholding information that could have helped police, to helping finance the attacks
by carrying out robberies - also had six weeks cut from their sentences.
Indonesia has arrested hundreds of militants linked to al-Qaida in recent years and
jailed 33 people over the 2002 bombings, the first in a series of attacks in Indonesia
blamed on the Jemaah Islamiyah terror network.
The government said three militants on death row for the bombings - Amrozi, Ali
Gufron and Imam Samudra - and three others sentenced to life were not eligible for
the prison term reductions.
Munir admitted to letting one of the men now serving life - an old classmate Mubarok -
stay in his home for several days in November 2002. But he said he had no idea his
friend was fleeing justice.
"As soon as I learned through the newspapers that he was involved in the Bali
bombings, I asked him to leave and gave him a little money for transportation," Munir
told the Associated Press by telephone.
"My mistake was not telling police he had been at my house."
· The youngest son of Indonesia's former dictator General Suharto also had 45 days taken off
his sentence, paving the way for his possible release on parole, the justice minister,
Hamid Awaluddin, said.
Tommy Suharto ordered the murder of a supreme court judge after being convicted in
a multimillion-dollar land deal. He was given 15 years' jail in 2002 but the sentence
was later reduced to 10 years on appeal.
The justice minister said that with the sentence discount for this holiday, and previous
holidays, Tommy Suharto had now "served two-thirds of his sentence, so he has the
right to file a request for conditional release
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
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