Bali Bombers Executed

It's about time. Took long enough.

The three convicts convicted of masterminding the 2002 Bali Bombings were executed at 23.10 Jakarta-time, Antara news agency reported early Saturday morning.

Amrozi, Mukhlas a.k.a. ALi Ghufron, and Imam Samudra, were reportedly rounded up from their cells at 23.00 and taken to a location known as the "Nirbaya" hills, located 6 kilometers from Batu Penitentiary.

Nirbaya, a former prison during the Dutch colonial era, is now used as a place for executing death-row convicts.

According to Antara, Amrozi, Mukhlas and Imam Samudra were shot dead in the presence of three Central Java Regional Police shooting squads.

The procession begun at 23.10 with a sermon by a religious scholar, advising the convicts to accept their fate.

Bali Bomber: 'Islam is Peace'

We've got just bit of a disconnect with these mutants.

On one hand they're shocked that they actually murdered as many people as they did, express no remorse for the mass murder, and then one of them reminds us how peaceful Islam is.

Sure.

TWO men who played key roles in the 2002 Bali bombings say they did not mean the death toll to reach as high as 202.

Imam Samudra, 38, and Ali Ghufron Ghufron, better known as Mukhlas, 48, also said that terror organisation al-Qaeda did not fund their deadly attacks, which killed 88 Australians.

Samudra said it was "unacceptable" so many people had died in the bombings on the mainly Hindu resort island.

The second explosion they had set off was much bigger than they had expected, he told London's Sunday Times.

Asked what he would say to families of his victims, Samudra said: "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."

What a guy. As far as I'm concerned, they can't execute them soon enough.

Samudra remains extremely dangerous.

Police said that while in jail in Bali, he used a smuggled laptop computer to communicate with militants to organise a second suicide attack in 2005, which killed 20.

"Your country, the United Kingdom, will lose, of course, because Allah says that only Muslims will win," he told the Times.

"I call you to Islam. Islam is peace. Tomorrow belongs to Islam."

I don't think so.

JIHAD SHEILA'S!

Did you read about the Australian Muslim convert who says she feels less sympathy for the victims of the Bali bombings than for the Afghans who helped her in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks? Rabiah Hutchinson, from Mudgee in New South Wales's central west, converted to Islam decades ago and follows the branch called Wahhabism, the same strand as Osama Bin Laden. (And so assiduously exported around the world by our dear friends, the Saudis. DV)

She says she feels more sympathy for the Afghanis than for the Bali bombing victims, "because they weren't holidaying in someone's country sometimes engaging in child pornography or paedophilia or drug taking". Speaking on television for the first time, in a program called Jihad Sheilas to be aired on ABC TV tonight, she defends her religion and says she is not a threat to Australia.

Sorry but she condemns herself by her every word. Wahhabism is a malignant cancer, a vicious pathology, and has NO place in the civilised world. She may be yearning for the Taliban, and she obviously feels nothing for all those young Australians so cruelly burned to death by her co-religionists. Why not do the decent thing and send her BACK to Afghanistan, to those Jihadi with whom she feels such sympathy? Fair dinkum?

Cross posted on A Tangled Web

"We get a lot of lectures from minority religious groups about displaying sensitivity to them..."

Australian Prime Minister John Howard is not happy, to say the least. There should be worldwide condemnation for this, yet there mostly is silence.

Disgusting.

Australia will formally complain to Indonesia after the archipelago nation's counter-terrorism chief hosted a party attended by one of the Bali bombers.

Indonesia's anti-terror chief, Brigadier-General Surya Dharma, said the party was in line with a new "gentle" approach to fighting terrorism, which aims to build a web of paid informants and former militants to help persuade hard-liners to change sides and reject terrorism.

Prime Minister John Howard today said he would ensure a formal complaint was lodged with Indonesia.

"I will certainly see that there is an objection communicated," Mr Howard told Southern Cross Broadcasting.

When asked for his reaction to the party, Mr Howard said he was "disgusted".

"Absolutely disgusted."

Mr Howard said the party was not representative of the broader Indonesian approach to fighting Islamic militants.

"We do have a good relationship with Indonesia, and President (Susilo Bambang) Yudhoyono is a good man and a good friend of Australia.

"That doesn't mean I'm not entitled to express outrage at this kind of thing, because I know how the families of these people (the victims) will be feeling."

Today is the fifth anniversary of the Bali bombings which killed 202 people including 88 Australians.

Mr Howard said the idea that the bombers should be treated as equals by Brigadier-General Dharma because of their shared Muslim faith was absurd.

"We get a lot of lectures from minority religious groups about displaying sensitivity to them. Can I say that that sort of thing, justified as it apparently has been on some kind of religious affinity, is so offensive ... as to really upset people who are still grieving over the loss of their loved ones."