BALI bomb-maker Umar Patek has been
sentenced to 20 years in prison after being found guilty over his role in the
deaths of 202 people in the Bali bombing, including 88 Australians.
He will spend the next 19 years in
custody after the court took into consideration the one year he has been in
jail since his arrest.
After taking all day yesterday to
review the evidence and read his judgement, chief judge Encep Yuliardi said
late last night in the West Jakarta District Court that Patek was "legally
and convincingly" guilty of all five charges including premeditated
murder.
The other charges were of possessing
weapons and smuggling weapons, ammunition and explosive materials into
Indonesia, providing assistance to an act of terrorism by hiding information
about a terrorist act, forging documents and possessing explosive materials.
Patek claimed during the trial that
he should be found not guilty of all except document forgery. He confided in an
interview with The Age during that trial that he wanted a short sentence
of less than 10 years because he was about to turn 46 and wanted children
before it was too late.
He was the last of the Bali bombers
to face trial in Indonesia. One, Hambali, has not been tried, but is in prison
in Guantanamo Bay over his links to Al Quaeda.
Of the other bombers, three were
killed during raids and three more — Imam Samudra, Amrozi and Mukhlas — were
executed in 2008 after being found guilty. Others, including the bomb-maker Ali
Imron were given jail sentences of up to life imprisonment.
The final day of the trial in the
West Jakarta District Court was conducted under massive security, with 243
police officers deployed at the court house including snipers and a platoon of
the Australian-funded anti-terror police, Densus 88.
Patek, known in Indonesia as the
Demolition Man, was for many years South-East Asia's most wanted man before his
arrest, with a $US1 million bounty on his head.
But he spent his trial denying knowledge
of the events of October 2002, apologising for the outcome and downplaying his
role.
His lawyers asked the court to drop
all the terror related charges, and to only find him guilty of passport fraud.
During the trial, prosecutors dropped their call for the death penalty, instead
asking for life imprisonment.
Patek said in his defence that he
only learned after arriving at the resort island in the weeks leading up to the
2002 bombing that westerners were to be the target of the explosive devices he
was making, which ultimately killed 202 people.
One of the plotters, Imam Samudra,
told him the bombs were designed to kill "bule", white foreigners,
only after he arrived at the rented house where the bombs were being made.
He gave evidence that the reason he
was given for the bombings was "revenge for what happened to Muslims in
Palestine".
But Patek told the five judges in
the West Jakarta District Court that he had tried to convince a number of his
co-conspirators not to go ahead with the plot, saying they should be attacking
Jews in Palestine if they wanted revenge.
Patek said he had mixed only about
50kg of the almost one tonne of explosives that made up the two bombs which
devastated two night clubs in downtown Kuta.
In an interview with The Age during
the trial, he said he hoped for a sentence of 10 years or less, even though he
admitted that, according to his conscience, he was guilty because "I did
mix (explosive) materials".
"[The explosives I mixed] was
less than 50kg. I am guilty for that but … I believe the panel of judges must
consider my motive, they must consider my state of psychology. The panel of
judges must consider my disagreement [with the tactics] and that it wasn't my
call."
However, he also emphasised that his
radical views had not changed.
"My position about jihad
remains the same," he said in the interview.
"It is an obligation of every
Muslim to carry out jihad" against those who attack Muslims.
"My question was, did the
Balinese attack Muslims in Bali? Or did the bule in Bali attacked Muslims? Or
were they Jews? I think the correct way is to go to Palestine and fight the
Jews who slaughtered Palestinians."
Patek had a long career in Islamic
terrorism, having fought with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the
Philippines, and been trained in bomb-making with the Mujahideen in
Afghanistan.
He fled Indonesia shortly after the
Bali bombings and was on the run for nine years before being caught in the
Pakistan town of Abbottabad just four months before Osama Bin Laden was killed
there by American troops.
He says he never met Bin Laden, and
did not realise the terrorist mastermind had given $30,000 to fund the Bali
bombings. Sydney Morning Herald
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