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Bali blast suspect Hambali’s family pleads for his release from Guantanamo Bay: ‘charge him, or let him go’
- The suspected mastermind of the Bali bombings, Hambali, has been in Guantanamo Bay for two decades awaiting trial
- Hambali’s brother, Kan Kan, wants a resolution to his case soon. ‘Either charge him and let him serve his sentence and then deport him, or let him go,’ he said
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It was more than 20 years ago, towards the end of 2000, that Kan Kan last saw his older brother, the suspected terrorist Encep Nurjaman better known by his alias Hambali.
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“He came to visit me and our family in Cianjur. Then the Christmas Eve bombings happened. I didn’t think that he had been involved, but then I saw it in the news and everyone was saying that he had been the mastermind,” Kan Kan said.
The blasts, which had been timed to coincide with Christmas Eve mass at churches across Indonesia, killed 18 and left 118 people injured.
While Kan Kan and his family were devastated by the accusation that Hambali had been behind the attacks, more bad news was to come. Just two years later, in October 2002, another series of bombs ripped through Kuta in Bali, killing 202 people and injuring some 200 others. In 2003, Hambali was arrested in Thailand, suspected of masterminding the Bali blasts, and handed over to US authorities.
From there, he was sent to CIA black sites where he was allegedly tortured, before being transferred to the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, where he remains awaiting trial.
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