Two Malaysian nationals held at Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp since 2006 were sentenced on charges related to the deadly bombing in Kuta, Bali, Indonesia on October 12, 2002. The bombing killed 202 people, including seven U.S. nationals. The sentences handed down to Mohammed Farik bin Amin and Mohammed Nazir bin Lep by the military court at Guantanamo Bay were for 23 years each, without reduction for time already served. However, a plea deal that was first drafted under the Trump administration and then adjusted capped the men’s sentences to a maximum of six years of detention. The judge then further reduced this to around five years due to legal technicalities.
The victims and families of the victims had spent several days reading victim impact statements before the war court. Farik and Nazir were arrested in 2003 in Thailand along with an Indonesian national, Encep Nurjaman, who is considered to be the mastermind of the Bali Bombing. All three men were taken to CIA black sites and tortured to extract confessions. In 2006, all three men were moved to Guantanamo Bay and held without trial for the next 17 years.
At trial, both men claimed they had no prior knowledge of the attack and had only been involved after it had occurred. The actual masterminds of the bombing were senior members of a hardline Islamist group in Indonesia, and several others involved in the bombing had already been executed, given life sentences, or serving life sentences. It seems as though Farik and Nazir’s roles in the actual bombing were minimal or non-existent, and their trial at Guantanamo Bay and double sentencing raises questions about the justice system.
With such a murky background to the case, tainted with allegations of torture and illegal incarceration without the right to trial, the trial at Guantanamo Bay seems to play by its own rules without thought for the victims and families of terrorism.