Advertisement

       SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

       Supported by

       SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

       Victims Describe Their Pain and Prisoners Apologize in Bali Bombing Trial

       A Guantánamo military court heard anguishing testimony at the sentencing hearing for two Malaysian prisoners who pleaded guilty after 20 years of detention.

       Share full article

       Read in app

       A memorial service for the 20th anniversary of the Bali bombing attack in Perth, Australia, in 2022. Credit...Richard Wainwright/EPA, via Shutterstock

       By Carol Rosenberg

       Reporting from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba

       Jan. 25, 2024

       Relatives of tourists killed in the 2002 terrorist bombing in Bali, Indonesia, spoke of endless, devastating grief, and two prisoners who conspired in the attack renounced violence in the name of Islam on Thursday for a U.S. military jury assembled at Guantánamo Bay to deliberate their sentence.

       The prisoners, Mohammed Farik Bin Amin and Mohammed Nazir Bin Lep, both Malaysians, pleaded guilty last week to war crimes charges for conspiring with an affiliate of Al Qaeda that carried out the attack. The bombings killed 202 people from 22 nations.

       “No God of any religion rewards such acts of horror,” said Solomon Lamagni-Miller, 18, of London. He was born after his uncle, Nathaniel Dan Miller, 31, was killed in the bombing and read a statement written by the victim’s mother, his grandmother.

       Christopher Snodgrass of Glendale, Ariz., said the loss of his daughter, Deborah, 33, in the bombing and other “terrorist activities worldwide” left him despising “over 20 percent of the world population, Muslims. I’m a religious person, and the hate-filled person I have become is certainly not what I wanted.”

       Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

       Carol Rosenberg reports on the wartime prison and court at Guantánamo Bay. She has been covering the topic since the first detainees were brought to the U.S. base in 2002. More about Carol Rosenberg

       A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 26, 2024, Section A, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: Bali Attackers Apologize To Families In Anguish . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

       Share full article

       Read in app

       Advertisement

       SKIP ADVERTISEMENT