Suspect in Bali bomb outrage ‘must go on trial’

A total of 202 people, including two young cousins from Sheffield and a Keighley-born company director, were killed on October 12, 2002 when the al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah group launched terror attacks on two Bali nightspots.

During the attack three bombs detonated – a backpack carried by a suicide bomber and a car bomb which both devastated Paddy’s Pub and the Sari Club opposite, followed by a third device outside the US consulate in Denpasar.

Natalie Perkins, 20, and Laura France, 18, were among 28 Britons killed in the blasts.

Miss France, a former student of Sheffield College, was taking a gap year and her cousin had taken eight months off from her shop job to travel with her.

Various members of Jemaah Islamiyah were convicted in relation to the bombings.

Three – Imam Samudra, Amrozi Nurhasyim and Huda bin Abdul Haq – were executed by firing squad in November 2008.

The 10th anniversary of the attack will be marked in Bali today by hundreds of relatives 
and friends of the victims, but 
authorities have raised the country’s security alert to its 
highest level after receiving 
intelligence of a threat to the ceremony.

The anniversary is also being marked in London by a closed service organised by the Foreign Office at the memorial to British and European victims near St James’ Park.

Meanwhile, relatives of the British victims have organised a service at St Paul’s Church in Covent Garden.

But Susanna Miller, whose brother Dan, 31, died in the attacks which left his wife Polly seriously injured, is calling for a final push to make sure those responsible are held to account.

According to relatives of survivors, one of the terrorists associated in the bombing, Riduan Isamuddin, known as Hambali, is still being held in detention in America.

“We have been campaigning very hard over the years for him to stand trial and be charged. He has been in Guantanamo for nine years,” said Ms Miller, 45.

Branding the situation an “open travesty of human rights”, she added: “It plays brilliantly into hands of the recruiting sergeants for al-Qaida. We find ourselves in this slightly curious position of fighting for the rights of one of the people responsible for the deaths of our relatives.”

Ms Miller visited the Foreign Office last week to discuss the issue and a spokesman confirmed it is being looked into.

She said feeling justice had been served would make victims’ relatives’ “minds quieter.”

“My brother was a lawyer, he believed in justice, and it’s particularly invidious that the single most important trial has not taken place and the detention of this terrorist actively helps recruit others.”

She said many relatives were not travelling to Bali for the 10th anniversary because of security concerns.

“Time, in many ways, stops still, and you just have to learn to live a different life”, she said.

“The more time passes, the more you realise what they have lost and the more family events they miss. In a way it gets sadder.”

Support from other families helps, Ms Miller said. At her father’s funeral last year there were five sets of relatives of Bali 
victims.

“There’s a sort of sense of community”, she added.

“But I think most people would say it has split their lives in half – pre-Bali and post-Bali.

“I think all you can do is live a new life, because you can 
never change what that bomb 
has done to us and continues to do.

“It’s like having an elephant in the room, you just have to learn to live a different life.”