“There’ll probably be retaliation. What is clear is that no drop of Muslim blood is free. It has consequences.” The person who said this, mind you, was not similarly concerned about the non-Muslim blood shed by the Bali bombers.
“Jihadists vow revenge for bombers’ executions,” by Stephen Fitzpatrick for The Australian, November 10 :
INDONESIA was on high alert for terrorist attacks last night after hundreds of chanting supporters buried the Bali bombers and demanded revenge for their executions.
Police clashed with hardline followers who gathered in two towns in Java to bury the bombers, whose bodies had been flown by helicopter from the prison island where they had been shot in an orange grove early yesterday morning.
Amrozi, his brother Ali Ghufron, also known as Mukhlas, and Imam Samudra died more than six years after the atrocity they planned and carried out, the October 2002 nightclub bombings that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.
Authorities are worried about reprisals in the wake of the executions, and Australia has warned travellers to reconsider their plans to visit Indonesia.
After days of threats before the executions, Indonesian authorities yesterday maintained high security around tourist areas, shopping centres and foreign embassies. The Australian embassy in Jakarta was yesterday the subject of its fourth bomb threat in recent days.
“Our target is the Australian embassy and we will bomb it this morning,” said the warning to Jakarta police, who sent their bomb squad to the mission. Nothing was found. […]
Until the end, the bombers – members of the Jemaah Islamiah regional terror network – expressed no remorse for their “infidel” victims and claimed they wanted to die as martyrs.
The head of Indonesia’s top Islamic body, the Majelis Ulama Indonesia, denounced the three bombers, saying they had not died as martyrs as they wished.
“To die as a martyr is impossible; people who kill cannot be said to be martyrs unless it is war,” MUI head Umar Shihab told detik.com.
“I think it’s not right. We are not at war. We are in peace and what they did, they killed Muslims.”
“They killed Muslims.” That’s what makes it wrong in his eyes. Not that they killed non-Muslims.
Following their executions on the prison island of Nusakambangan, the bodies of Amrozi and Mukhlas were welcomed amid frenzied scenes in their home village of Tenggulun in East Java.
Some in the crowd wept and shouted, “Allahu Akbar!” (God is great) at the sight of three vultures over the village as the helicopter bearing the bodies landed in a nearby field.
“This is God’s grace,” one member of the crowd shouted. “The mujaheddin (holy warriors) will fight on!”
Heavily armed paramilitary police could not control the 500-strong crowd that surged around the ambulances carrying the bodies from the helicopter.
Clashes broke out and the police were driven off the road amid shouts of “Jihad!” and “Get out!”
Abuse was hurled at foreign journalists, who were prevented from filming proceedings, and at police who formed a protective barrier along either side of the road before being overwhelmed by the sheer weight of numbers.
The bodies of Amrozi and Mukhlas were delivered to the village mosque for prayers, before being carried through a crowd of about 1000 onlookers – some having climbed trees to get a better view – to an Islamic boarding school founded by another of the bombers’ siblings, Djafar Soddiq.
They were accompanied by Abu Bakar Bashir, the divisive preacher whose message of hate helped set the terrorists on their deadly campaign against the West.
The bodies of the two bombers, wrapped in shrouds, were later carried to two graves side by side in a specially cleared plot of land.
The site, which will become a shrine, features signs reading “Grave of the Islamic fighters, Amrozi and Mukhlas”.
Ibrahim Hooper is no doubt firing off a strongly-worded letter to the people responsible for this, telling them that there was nothing Islamic about what Amrozi and Mukhlas did. Aren’t you, Ibrahim?
There were similar chaotic scenes in the west Java town of Serang as Samudra’s body was paraded to a graveyard, shrouded in a black cloth bearing a Koranic inscription in Arabic. “There’ll probably be retaliation,” said Ganna, 26, who had travelled 90km from Jakarta to show his support. “What is clear is that no drop of Muslim blood is free. It has consequences.”
Samudra’s family handed out copies of what they claim was his final will, which urged supporters to continue to carry out attacks against non-Muslims.
The three bombers were executed by firing squads shortly after midnight. Each was blindfolded and tied to a stake in a clearing and executed simultaneously. Given the option of standing, sitting or kneeling as the 12-member squads took aim, they chose to sit.
The trio reportedly shouted out “Allahu Akbar” as they were taken to their deaths….