“I am happy that it exploded,” said Amrozi, an Islamic extremist who has admitted that he bought the minivan which was packed with explosives before it was detonated outside the Sari Club on a busy Saturday night. At least 191 people died in the attack, most of them young Western tourists.
The former motorcycle mechanic said his only regret was the trouble he had caused his family. “I apologise to my parents, brothers and sisters and other relatives over the incident that has caused so much trouble,” Amrozi told General Dai Bachtiar, Indonesia's police chief, in an interview in Bali yesterday watched by the media. “Those involved were me and my younger brother, Ali Imran.”
Amrozi, who is 40 but looks younger,
laughed with the police and once turned and waved at reporters. Indonesian
police believe that the bomb plot was a family affair which included Amrozi
and at least two of his brothers, Ali Imran and Mukhlas, who have been
named as suspects but are still at large. The police suspect that Amrozi's
older brother, Mukhlas, is a member of the terrorist organisation Jemaah
Islamiya, which has alleged links with al-Qaeda.