KUALA LUMPUR – Malaysians Mohammed Nazir Lep and Mohammed Farik Amin pleaded guilty last week to conspiring in the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed more than 200 people from 22 nations.
The two men appeared in front of a military court at the United States naval base in Guantanamo Bay in proceedings broadcast via video link to reporters.
Nazir, 47, and Farik, 48, have pleaded guilty to five of the nine charges against them, as reported by Benar News.
This marks the first time they have entered a plea since being brought to Guantanamo some 17 years ago.
According to The New York Times, charges related to the 2003 attack on the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta that killed 11 people were dropped as part of a plea deal, and in exchange, the men agreed to provide evidence against the alleged Indonesian mastermind, Encep Nurjaman, also known as Hambali.
The duo were accused of being Hambali’s accomplices and charged alongside him, but their cases were separated last year.
The Malaysians will be sentenced next week, after which they are expected to return home.
In front of a US military jury since last week, relatives of tourists killed in bombings have spoken of endless, devastating grief, while two prisoners who conspired in the attack have renounced violence in the name of Islam.
A US military jury is hearing the case to decide a sentence in the 20- to 25-year range and cannot grant credit for time served.
There is, however, a secondary, secret agreement in which the men could return to Malaysia later this year.
“No god of any religion rewards such acts of horror,” said Solomon Lamagni-Miller, 18, from London.
He was born after his uncle, Nathaniel Dan Miller, 31, was killed in the bombing, and he read a statement written by the victim’s mother, his grandmother.
Christopher Snodgrass of Glendale, Arizona, said the loss of his daughter, Deborah, 33, in the bombing and other “terrorist activities worldwide” has left him despising “over 20% of the world’s population; Muslims.
“I’m a religious person, and the hate-filled person I have become is certainly not what I wanted.”
Echoing the sentiment of several family members, he appealed to the jury to “deal with these murderers in such a manner that they cannot do to others as they have done to us.”
Fathers, mothers, brothers, and three sisters of the victims offered anguished descriptions of searches for missing relatives, of life-altering burns, and of the vacuum left by the deaths of young people who had gone on vacation in Bali and never came home.
Two of Farik’s elder brothers tearfully asked the jury for leniency.
Then both defendants renounced their terrorist pasts, apologised to the families, and said they were tortured while in the CIA’s secret overseas prison network from 2003 to 2006.
The men were captured in Thailand in June 2003.
Farik’s brothers flew in from Kuala Lumpur. The oldest brother, Fadil, 62, an architect who was educated in Birmingham, England, sorrowfully told the court that his mother taught all 10 of her children a peaceful form of Islam.
“He somehow got sidetracked” and made bad choices, he said.
Another next-of-kin of the victims, Matthew Arnold, who travelled to Guantanamo from his home in Birmingham, testified that his brother Timothy, 43, was in Bali for a rugby tournament when he was killed “by this atrocity”.
“My family’s lives have been changed completely by the actions of the perpetrators of this crime.
“I would like the court and Farik and Nazir to be aware of the devastating effects of their actions on so many innocent and decent people,” he said.
Farik, who hung his head at the defence table throughout the hours of testimony, apologised to the victims, his family, and all Muslims.
“This is not what I was taught as a child.
In his two decades of US detention, he said, “I have changed. I am not an angry young man anymore. I am a reformed man. My faith has evolved,” he added. – January 26, 2024
