http://www.guardian.co.uk/indonesia/Story/0,,1930387,00.html
Anger over early release of Bali bomb prisoners
Staff and agencies
Tuesday October 24, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
Australian Peter Hughes shows his burn scars during the Bali bomb trial.
Photograph: AP
Survivors of the Bali bombings - which killed 202 people four years ago -
reacted with anger today after two Islamist militants jailed over the attack
were freed.
Mujarod bin Salim and Sirojul Munir, who were convicted of hiding two of the
masterminds of the suicide bombings, had up to 45 days shaved from their
five-year sentences.
Officials in Bali said the move was part of a series of sentence reductions for
thousands of prisoners to mark the end of Ramadan, the Islamic fasting month.
Nine other prisoners jailed over the bombings were among those who had their
sentences cut.
Indonesia traditionally cuts prison terms on national holidays for inmates who
exhibit good behaviour, usually reducing them by several months. The justice
ministry said more than 43,000 convicts benefited from the latest sentence
reductions.
However, the decision to include convicted terrorists - a policy that the
government said earlier it was reconsidering - prompted anger from those
affected by the attacks on two crowded nightclubs in October 2002.
Peter Hughes, an Australian who suffered burns to 54% of his body, said: "After
what I've survived, to see these people get rewarded ... it's something we
westerners just don't understand.
"I hate to think what the families of the victims who died are going through."
Bin Salim walked free from the main prison on Bali island this afternoon, said
Ilham Jaya, the prison warden, and Munir left the jail in East Kalimantan's
capital of Balikpapan several hours earlier.
"I'm happy that I'll be able to spend time with my family again," said Munir.
He claimed he had nothing to do with the attacks and said he was praying he
would not be stigmatised by his time in jail.
Nine other militants convicted of relatively minor roles in the bombings - from
withholding information that could have helped police, to helping finance the
attacks by carrying out robberies - also had six weeks cut from their
sentences.
Indonesia has arrested hundreds of militants linked to al-Qaida in recent years
and jailed 33 people over the 2002 bombings, the first in a series of attacks
in Indonesia blamed on the Jemaah Islamiyah terror network.
The government said three militants on death row for the bombings - Amrozi, Ali
Gufron and Imam Samudra - and three others sentenced to life were not eligible
for the prison term reductions.
Munir admitted to letting one of the men now serving life - an old classmate
Mubarok - stay in his home for several days in November 2002. But he said he
had no idea his friend was fleeing justice.
"As soon as I learned through the newspapers that he was involved in the Bali
bombings, I asked him to leave and gave him a little money for transportation,"
Munir told the Associated Press by telephone.
"My mistake was not telling police he had been at my house."
ยท The youngest son of Indonesia's former dictator General Suharto also had 45
days taken off his sentence, paving the way for his possible release on parole,
the justice minister, Hamid Awaluddin, said.
Tommy Suharto ordered the murder of a supreme court judge after being convicted
in a multimillion-dollar land deal. He was given 15 years' jail in 2002 but the
sentence was later reduced to 10 years on appeal.
The justice minister said that with the sentence discount for this holiday, and
previous holidays, Tommy Suharto had now "served two-thirds of his sentence, so
he has the right to file a request for conditional release
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