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| Southeast Asia |
| Bali bomber claims torture |
| 2006-05-16 |
| One of four men accused over last year's Bali restaurant suicide bombings claims Indonesia's anti-terror squad tortured him into revealing the whereabouts of bomb mastermind Azahari Husin, who was cornered and shot dead last year. Moh Cholily said officers of the Detachment 88 group kicked and choked him and used electric shocks before he told them the location of Azahari's hideout in East Java. He also accused them of sodomising him and placing a gun in his mouth. The information led to a siege of the house by anti-terror officers and the shooting death of Azahari in gun battle last November. Members of Detachment 88 are trained by anti-terror experts from Australia and the US as well as from Europe. Australian Federal Police officers were near scene of last year's shootout and later helped examine the scene forensically, looking for evidence to thwart possibly future terror attacks. Azahari was accused of being the architect of the bombs used in last year's attacks as well as the 2002 Bali bombing and the 2004 attack on the Australian embassy in Jakarta. "I was slapped, kicked in the stomach, they lit a match under my chin, they squeezed and pulled my genitals, tied a belt around my neck until I choked and chained my legs and hands until they bruised," Cholily claimed in a letter titled "Seven Days full of Terror". The letter was read to the Denpasar District Court by Cholily's lawyer Bambang Triyanto. Cholily, 28, is accused of helping Azahari assemble suicide bomb backpacks used attack three Bali cafes in 2005, killing four Australians among 20 bystanders. He said the torture only stopped when the Detachment 88 anti-terror squad handed him over to Bali police, who treated him humanely. Prosecutors allege the civil engineering graduate joined Jemaah Islamiah, the regional al-Qaeda-linked terror group, in 1999 and was taught by Azahari how to make bombs. Along with three other men on trial in Bali, he faces a possible death penalty under Indonesia's tough anti-terror laws. He said he felt guilty about giving away the location of Azahari's hideout, because the pair had been close friends and confidants. "I was the apple of Azahari's eye. It made me very sad," he told AAP from the back of a police van ahead of his trial resumption. Triyanto told the court that the prosecution indictment contained lies, including a false confession that Cholily had been with Azahari after the Bali attacks and on hearing of the carnage on BBC radio, Azahari shouted, "Allah hu Akbar. Our project was a success." "In reality, these words never existed," Triyanto said. He also denied that Cholily ever understood that coded references to a "cosmetic box" were in reality about the suicide bomb backpacks being prepared by Azahari. The four trials being heard separately were continuing. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #7 Quite obviously this pansy-@ssed coward has not been tortured very extensively. After all, he's still alive. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2006-05-16 16:05 |
| #6 What, no public disembowelment? Pansy-ass Indonesians. |
| Posted by: mcsegeek1 2006-05-16 12:21 |
| #5 Perhaps he is a masochist ... ummm... and had been hoping for rougher treatment.. hmmm... and is hinting too the cellmate about missing that sodomising treatment... yawn... |
| Posted by: 3dc 2006-05-16 09:55 |
| #4 my nanoviolin is in the shop....so sad |
| Posted by: Frank G 2006-05-16 09:29 |
| #3 How can it be a false confession if they went to where he said he would be and killed the guy? |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2006-05-16 09:04 |
| #2 SOP, straight from the handbook, though it could very well be true, given Indonesia's history; still, this story definitively needs the digital Sympathy Meter graphic. The sodomy is a nice touch, though. Somewhat OT it reminds me the russian troops supposedly have an habit of raping their male prisoners (a slave thingie? The serbs supposedly often did the same), which lets me hope many a Lion Of Islam(tm) was brang back to his cell in a state of shock, muttering to himself : "By the Holy pubic hair of the Prophet(tm), I didn't thought Jihad(tm) was going to turn out that way...", lol. |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2006-05-16 06:25 |
| #1 What about the families of the victims? They are absolutely tortured/tormented by their losses all their lives. Not simply, "claim". |
| Posted by: Duh! 2006-05-16 05:52 |