Man who built the Bali club bomb gets ‘lenient’ 20 years
an indonesian militant has been convicted of helping to build the massive car bomb used in the 2002 Bali nightclub attacks and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Known as “Demolition Man,” Umar Patek, 45, was found guilty of all charges by the West Jakarta district court for his role in the 2002 resort island attacks that killed 202 people, including 88 australians and seven americans.
The five-member panel of jusdges concluded Patek played an important role in building the explosives used in the bombings. he was also sentenced for his involvement in Jakarta church attacks on Christmas Eve in 2000 that killed 19 people.
“The acts of the defendant have created many victims and caused deep suffering to the victims’ families,” the verdict said.
Patek, who was arrested last year in Pakistan in the same northwestern town where Osama bin Laden was killed several months later, was the last key defendant to be tried following the attacks. he argued that he did not play a major part in building the car bomb, which was the biggest explosive used in the attack. instead, he said bombmaking masterminds azahari bin husin and Dulmatin were in charge of that job. Both have since died in police raids.
Patek, whose real name is hisyam bin alizein, has apologised to the victims’ families, Christians and to the government, saying he was not in favour of going through with the attack against tourists, but that he could not speak out against other senior members of the group. The mission was supposedly meant to avenge Western policies in the Palestinian territories, but Patek argued that he never saw the connection.
he could have faced a firing squad for the various terror-related and criminal charges.
Prosecutors had sought a life sentence for Patek, who was accused of illegal weapons possession, concealing terrorist acts, immigration violations and premeditated murder in the Bali bombings. Some felt the sen- tence was too light, but were encouraged by the remorse Patek expressed during the trial.
“We will use him to influence other militants to not carry out terrorism acts,” said harry Purwanto, deputy chairman of indonesia’s counter terrorism agency. “Our aim is not only to jail them, but to change their platform to be law-abiding citizens.”
The Bali bombings marked indonesia’s deadliest terror strike. On Saturday, 12 October 2002, a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a nightclub jammed with tourists at Kuta beach, killing many instantly and forcing others to flee. another suicide bomber detonated the massive bomb loaded in the car parked in front of two clubs.
Patek left Bali just before the attacks and spent nine years running from the law, travelling in the Philippines and Pakistan. a $1 million bounty was offered for his capture. Philippine interior secretary Jesse Robredo, who oversees the national police, said he expected many people would feel that Patek deserved a harsher punishment.
“Many will feel this is light, considering the massive deaths caused by the attack he was involved in,” he said.
China has undoubtedly benefited from the world system created and supported by the United States. indeed, Richard nixon’s journey to China in 1972 opened the door for China’s return to the international community. Most of the next two decades were a honeymoon for Sino-american relations.
Of course, China’s inadequate intellectual-property protection has damaged relations. and the role of China’s state-owned enterprises and official Chinese support for technological “national champions” (privileged companies that almost certainly use government money carelessly) has also hurt relations.
But neither of these flaws, nor the exchange rate, is at the root of today’s global imbalances. Consider the exchange rate. The United Kingdom maintained a current-account surplus for the century before World War i, and the US did the same for about 80 years before 1980. But neither country, apparently, did so by manipulating its exchange rate.
Moreover, the economies that managed to narrow their external gaps with the US substantially after World War ii, notably Germany, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, ran current-account surpluses throughout their rapid-growth periods. This contradicts american economists’ conventional wisdom that fast-growing countries should borrow today against their larger future shares in the world economy.
One possible explanation is that the relationship between GDP growth rates and a country’s current-account position is not linear. Compared to countries with very slow growth rates, countries with reasonably high growth rates should borrow. But when a country’s growth rate continues to increase, its saving rate would increase faster than its investment rate, so it is more likely to run a current-account surplus.
For “catch-up” countries, like China, rapid growth is often accompanied by brisk structural change that moves factors of production, especially labour, from low-productivity activities to economic sectors with much higher productivity. This adds to the surplus by increasing firms’ profitability.
China’s exchange-rate policy is problematic not because it promotes exports, but because it has forced the country to accumulate a huge pile of wasteful foreign reserves.
While China’s economy is hampered by structural difficulties, the US is not free of and is underpinning the US current-account deficit. Oil exporters aside, countries running current-account surpluses, such as China, Germany, and Japan, have stronger manufacturing sectors relative to their financial sectors, while the relationship is reversed for countries running external deficits.
Finally, america’s global hegemony has proven to be a curse as well as a blessing. The US dollar accounts for 60 per cent of world trade, and the country is a safe haven for global investors. But, while large capital inflows reduce borrowing costs, they also tend to cause currentaccount deficits: lower costs of capital boost asset prices, with the wealth effect then prompting people to consume more than they earn.
For three decades, “reform” was a word reserved for the Chinese side of the Sino-american relationship. The US, one hopes, will grow to like the sound of it. l Yao Yang is director of the China Centre for Economic Research, professor of economics at Beijing University, and deputy dean of the National School of Development.