INDEPTH: PASSPORT TO TERROR
The Bali Bombing
CBC News Online | October 12, 2004
Reporter: Terence McKenna
Producer: Michelle Gagnon
Editor: Dominic Rioual
Camera: Douglas Husby
Bali is one of the most prosperous islands in the nation of Indonesia and the Balinese are known the world over as a peaceful and spiritual people. Indonesia is one of the world's most populous Muslim countries, but on the island of Bali the population is almost 95% Hindu.
Most Balinese go to the temple every day, performing ceremonies to honour their ancestors and the members of their families who have recently passed away, leaving offerings of incense and food.
In a New Year's ceremony that occurs every 210 days, processions arrive at the temple to accompany the Hindu gods on their way back to heaven after their sojourn among the faithful on Earth.
At the temple, women of all ages perform a precise and elegant welcoming dance.
Recently the Balinese have become even more religious, a phenomenon triggered by a epic event that occurred on this island two years ago on Oct. 12, 2002.
A night in Kuta
That event took place in Kuta, the nightclub section of Bali, where young Western tourists congregate every evening at establishments like Paddy's Pub.
Gusti Nurdiada
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Gusti Nurdiada, the Balinese manager of Paddy's Pub, remembers that evening well. He came to work as always, immediately after visiting his local temple.
"I put the offering on the temple, God bless we are safe from anything like the bad thing," says Nurdiada.
In the nightclub district that night was another religious Indonesian, but he wasn't Hindu and he wasn't from the island of Bali.
Ali Imron
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Ali Imron is a Muslim extremist, a member of Jemaah Islamiyah, the local branch of al-Qaeda. He had come to Bali to kill non-Muslims, especially Westerners.
On the night of Oct. 12, 2002, the nightclubs of Bali filled up with tourists, mostly Australian.
Death approaches
Outside in the street, a van driven by Ali Imron filled with explosives approached the nightclub district.
"I headed out around 10:25 p.m.," he says. "As the van was quite heavy, I had to drive very slowly."
With him in the white Mitsubishi van were two volunteer suicide bombers.
At 11:14 p.m. the white van pulled up near Paddy's Pub. One of the suicide bombers got out and made his way into Paddy's, wearing a jacket loaded with explosives and a detonator in its pocket.
His job was to create a diversion, to drive the nightclub patrons out into the street where they would be killed by the bomb in the van.
He walked out onto the dance floor and at 11:15 p.m. blew himself up.
In the confusion, patrons streamed out of the pub and into the street where the white van was waiting.
"It happened very quickly," said Montreal's Sophie Sureau, who was across the street in the Sari Club at the time. "I heard the first explosion and then the second, which was closer to us, and then I was already on the ground and under the debris."
The Bali bombing, which killed over 200 civilians, came one year, one month and one day after the Sept. 11 attacks. The bombing, which showed that al-Qaeda was a global power and a continuing threat, forever changed the lives of all that survived, including the Canadians.
The answers to how and why it happened come from the people who survived it - and from the men who caused it.
A radical preacher
The story begins more than 10 years earlier with a simple Muslim preacher from Indonesia.
Abu Bakar Bashir
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In the 1990s, Abu Bakar Bashir was a teacher and a preacher. Now he is called the Osama bin Laden of Southeast Asia. He became a hero to many in Indonesia for opposing the Suharto dictatorship, and went into exile in neighbouring Malaysia.
He gained renown for his radical brand of Islam, which openly preached hatred for Americans and Jews.
In the early 1990s, Bashir settled in a modest house in a small village called Sungai Manggis, about 50 kilometres from Kuala Lumpur.
Mior Hamidun
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Mior Hamidun was the landlord who rented the house to Bashir. He says he found nothing objectionable about his tenant.
"He was very polite, simple and sometime he talked more about religion," says Hamidun.
He remembers Bashir was very religious. "Not only here but people from outside came here to follow what he speaks…because of his knowledge, knowledge and humble in many other things. He [was] loved by his followers."
In 1994, a devoted follower of Bashir rented the house right next door. The man, Riduan bin Isamuddin, also known as Hambali, became al-Qaeda's military commander in Southeast Asia and would eventually order the Bali bombing.
"I think they are close, because Hambali … every time when he want to speak to Bashir he called him 'Teacher,'" says Hamidun. "The followers used to refer to Bashir as teacher."
Hambali is now in custody at an unnamed U.S. military base. President George W. Bush has called him "one of the world's most lethal terrorists." He is accused of planning the deaths of thousands of civilians.
A call to jihad
Abu Bakar Bashir
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Bashir set up several schools in Indonesia and Malaysia that served as indoctrination centres for his radical Islamic views. Among his students were three brothers who would form the nucleus of the al-Qaeda cell that would carry out the Bali bombing. They were known as Ali Imron, Amrozi, and the eldest of the brothers, Mukhlas.
Mukhlas was so inspired by Bashir's call to jihad that he went to Afghanistan to fight in the war against the Russians in the 1980s. It was in Afghanistan that Mukhlas met Osama bin Laden.
"Allah granted me the chance to meet Osama bin Laden in 1987. We met face-to-face while we were staying in caves," says Mukhlas. "He was leading the war against Russia. He is a real leader. He's the one human being which I very much adore in this world."
Mukhlas and his brothers were first identified as terrorist suspects after 22 Catholic churches were bombed throughout Indonesia on Christmas Eve 2000, but Indonesian authorities did not vigorously pursue them.
A Canadian connection
Then a captured Canadian al-Qaeda suspect, Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, told the FBI in August 2002 that he had been involved in an earlier meeting with Hambali and Mukhlas in Bangkok, a meeting where Hambali announced that al-Qaeda would move on to bombing soft targets like nightclubs in Indonesia and elsewhere frequented by Westerners.
Once again, little police action resulted from the advance information.
Why did Mukhlas and Hambali settle on Bali as the appropriate target? Because that was the one place in Indonesia with the greatest concentration of Western tourists.
"It had to be Bali, because that is what was possible at the time," says Mukhlas. "And why Westerners? Because there were lots of Westerners - Americans and Europeans. Because they are followers of Bush and his cronies."
Making bombs in Bali
Once Bali was identified as the target, Mukhlas assigned his younger brother Amrozi to assemble the explosives required for the job.
Hundreds of pounds of potassium chlorate and other chemicals arrived at Bali's main bus terminal and were transferred to the White Mitsubishi van that Amrozi had purchased.
At night, the bombers would cruise down Legian Street in the Kuta section of Bali. They were conducting reconnaissance on their intended targets, Paddy's Pub and the Sari Club.
The bombing team linked up with an engineer, Imam Samudra, to give them expert advice in their planning.
"The Sari Club was frequented by more than 90 per cent Westerners. They were our target, these foreigners," says Imam Samudra.
The bombers decided that they should symbolically attack the American Consulate in Bali at the same time they set off their other bombs, but they were worried about being caught by the guards there.
At about 7 p.m. on the evening of the bombing, two of the bombers stopped their motorcycle about 200 metres from the U.S. Consulate and left a package next to a large tree near the road. It was a bomb that could be triggered by cellphone.
The bombers had rented a house in Denpasar, Bali, where they packed their chemical bomb materials into filing cabinets, each rigged with detonators. The 12 filing cabinets containing 1,200 kg of explosives were loaded into the white van.
A last-minute snag
There was a last-minute hitch with the bombing mission. The two suicide bombers, code named Iqbal One and Iqbal Two, confessed at the last minute that they couldn't drive the van, which had a standard transmission.
The youngest of the brothers, Ali Imron, was reluctantly persuaded to drive the van to an intersection close to the bombing targets.
"They could only drive in a straight line. So at this point there was already a misunderstanding," says Ali Imron. "I had to drive the van to the junction at Legian. I told Iqbal One to take over the driver's seat. I then stepped out of the van."
Iqbal one now only had to drive the truck bomb in a straight line. Iqbal two, the second suicide bomber, was wearing the jacket prepared by Amrozi that was packed with explosives. It was only a matter of seconds after he blew himself up in Paddy's Pub that the bomb in the van went off directly in front of The Sari Club.
'It was true jihad'
Sophie Sureau
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After the two explosions at Paddy's, Sophie Sureau lay under the burning rubble of the Sari Club.
"I couldn't get up, people were walking on my back, a table was blocking my head. I was on fire," she says. "The roofs there are made of straw, and the straw was burning on my back. I needed a shot of adrenaline to tell myself, 'Sophie, you have to get out.' There was no one to help me. No one. "
Imam Samudra says that the timing of the explosion was deliberate. "We calculated the time to ensure we didn't harm any of our own. We calculated it so that we could minimize the number of locals killed," he says. "That's why we didn't do it after midnight because lots of local beggars and drivers come out then. But there is also human error. There is no perfect military operation."
Sureau's first instinct was to flee the scene and seek help immediately. "Once I got up, I left without looking back. I was thinking only of survival…find a hospital, take care of myself," she says.
Sureau says the only pain she could feel was in her foot. She thought it was because she'd lost her shoes in the explosion, so she grabbed a pair of sandals from a nearby beach store to protect her feet. She discovered later she was suffering from severe burns.
Sureau in the hospital
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"I asked for a ride on a little motorcycle to get to the nearest hospital," she says.
"At the first hospital I went to I realized there were other people arriving in a construction truck. About 25 people were piled on top of each other."
Hundreds of burned and mangled victims were pulled out of the rubble. The hospitals of Bali were overwhelmed.
"It was true jihad," says Mukhlas. "The impact on Bush and his cronies was incredible. It shook the world."
Amrozi concurs. "I was really happy when it happened," he says. "Why wouldn't I be? "
Picking up the pieces
It had been Sophie Sureau's first day in Bali. In the afternoon she was posing on the beach with a new bikini. Before midnight she was in a Bali hospital with the skin on her neck, arms and back horribly burned. She felt very lucky to be alive.
"Both my eardrums were perforated. I had burns on 23 per cent of my body. Most were third-degree burns," she says.
Bombing aftermath
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The cleanup and police investigation in the aftermath of the Bali bombing were massive tasks. Almost an entire city block had been levelled. More and more bodies were discovered under the rubble.
In charge of the massive investigation was Gen. Mangku Pastika, the Balinese chief of police. As a Balinese Hindu, he believed that his first step in the investigation should be a trip to the temple.
"Bali is very spiritual island," says Pastika. "There is one thing outside the scientific crime investigation that I must do and I heard also that all the priests here in Bali are also praying, so I joined them to do this."
Gen. Mangku Pastika
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The biggest break in the investigation came when Pastika was praying at the temple exactly three weeks after the explosion. At the same time, an identification number was found on the chassis of the van used for the truck bomb.
"On that 2nd of November, when I prayed in the Besakih, the mother temple of Bali," says Pastika, "my men examined the chassis once again in our laboratory, and we found out the transport registration number."
A 'Smiling Bomber' confesses
Amrozi was the last registered owner of the van. He quickly confessed to police. He became known around the world as the "Smiling Bomber" because of his demeanour during his arrest and public interrogation.
Shortly after came the arrest of his brothers. Ali Imron said that all Indonesians should be proud of what they accomplished. Mukhlas, too, was unrepentant.
"People like me - my highest ambition is to die - Best of all to be killed by the enemy. My ambition is to be shot."
When Amrozi was sentenced to death by the Balinese court, he immediately exhibited his trademark smile.
"Oh yeah, this bastard always like this, always. Him thinking him the king, him the right one," says the manager of Paddy's Pub. "I say kill him. That is the last choice: kill him. Just shoot him, bang. Done, finish."
Every week for the last two years, Sophie Sureau goes to the Villa Medica Re-habilitation Hospital in Montreal, where she spends hours on a variety of therapy for her burns.
"I have a new job," she says. "That's working on myself."
Sureau has also founded a support group for burn victims.
"I've learned something through this: things happen for a reason in life," she says. "I realized that my life was too fast-paced. I needed to understand that. I believe that this event… made me finally understand that. I've grown through this. I'm not saying terrorism should continue… but I've come out of this stronger.
"It's crazy, but that's really how I feel."
An attack of remorse
On the other side of the world in Bali, after months behind bars, the youngest of the three brothers who carried out the bombing finally had an attack of conscience. He now says he feels sorry for all the pain and death he caused.
"What I did was wrong and I regret it," says Ali Imron. "It's fair to say I am ashamed. I can't say I have no regrets. What's the point? You can't deny it to your conscience."
Ali Imron has co-operated with police and has been spared the death penalty. His brothers Mukhlas and Amrozi still face a firing squad, but are positive that other Muslim radicals will take their place.
"Any Muslim who understands Islam will do it," says Amrozi. "As long as Jews and Christians led by Bush continue to wage war on us, then we'll wage war on them. Remember that."
A time for cleansing
Abu Bakar Bashir was arrested shortly after the Bali bombing and has been in prison ever since. Every time he appears in court, he is cheered by his many followers. He has been charged with leading a terrorist organization and other crimes, but the Indonesian prosecutors have not been able to connect him directly to the Bali case.
The bombers of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta in September 2004 announced that there would be more bombs if Bashir is not released from prison.
The newly elected president of Indonesia, Susilo Yudhoyono, says that he will be much tougher fighting Muslim radicals than previous governments have been.
The people of Bali have conducted rituals to purify the sight of the bombing. They believe the souls of the victims had to be released from the earth in order to ascend to heaven.
Two years later, the Bali bombing stands as a powerful example that al-Qaeda can strike at civilians anywhere in the world.
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