Stephen Fitzpatrick, Tenggulun, East Java | November 11, 2008
THE delighted family and spiritual adviser of executed Bali bombers Amrozi and Mukhlas have hailed their martyrdom, claiming the brothers died with smiles on their faces and that there will be 1001 jihadis to take their place.
Abdul Rohim, son of Muslim preacher Abu Bakar Bashir who set the bombers on their path of mass murder, said he had examined the pair's faces after they were shot by firing squads early on Sunday.
"They were smiling, and the perfume of the bodies was not from the soap used to clean them; it was an extraordinary perfume," Mr Rohim told The Australian.
Mr Rohim warned that the executions could now unleash 1001 jihadis.
"The Government thinks that by executing them it can stop the jihad," Mr Rohim said.
"But the point is that this will not extinguish the jihad.
"It's not possible to extinguish the light of Allah. The jihad will always continue."
The boasts came as Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said Australia continued to receive credible threats of attacks after Sunday's execution of the terrorists.
"Regrettably, we continue to receive credible information that Bali remains an attractive target for terrorist activity," Mr Smith told parliament.
However, the Foreign Minister said there had been no change to the threat level cited in Australian Government travel advice.
It remained at the second-highest level - "reconsider your need to travel" - the level it has been pegged at since the attack on October 12, 2002, in which 202 people, 88 of them Australians, were killed.
The statement came as recently installed Bali Governor I Made Mangku Pastika - the former local police chief who headed the investigation into the terrorist atrocity - warned against violent retaliation for the executions.
Indonesian authorities also revealed they continued to be at a high level of alert after several bomb threats over the past week, including on Australia's Jakarta embassy.
"I hope the people will regard (the executions) as a normal thing, and not react excessively," Mr Pastika said.
He attempted to pour cold water on the claims of holiness being made by the families of Imam Samudra and the bin Nurhasyim brothers.
Hundreds of supporters briefly clashed with police as the bodies of Mukhlas and Amrozi - the latter dubbed the "smiling assassin" for his courtroom antics - arrived by helicopter at their village of Tenggulun, in east Java, on Sunday.
Bashir, who responded to the two brothers' final wishes by praying over their bodies shortly before they were interred had yesterday morning resumed his schedule of preaching jihad in Muslim boarding schools across Indonesia.
Bashir, the co-founder of Jemaah Islamiah, was jailed on a conspiracy charge related to the bombings before being released in 2006.
Female members of the family visited the brothers' grave site to tidy up and pray, having been denied access to the area during Sunday's burial ceremony according to strict Muslim funeral rules. Yasyrifah binti Nurhasyim, the sister aged in between Amrozi - who was 46, and Mukhlas, who was 48 - was praying at the graves with her daughter, Aulia Sahida.
A defiant Yasyrifah said the family was proud of her brothers' "achievement". "We're relieved, because they've become martyrs," she said.
She added that the graves, which are set apart from the main cemetery in Tenggulun village, would be kept simple.
"A fence will be put around the graves," she said. "But no sort of shrine will be built. We're worried it could become an altar (for ancestor worship)."
Muslim leaders in Java often struggle with trying to keep the faithful from following the older syncretic aspects of the religion that are holdovers from a pre-Islamic past in Indonesia - such as ancestor worship.
Family and hardline followers such as Abdul Rohim were busy yesterday offering interpretations of the arrival of three large birds of prey over Tenggulun village on Sunday, moments before the bodies of Amrozi and Mukhlas arrived. The birds wheeled high in the air for several minutes and then separated, two flying in one direction and the third flying separately in another.
Followers are interpreting this as a sign that the brothers and their co-conspirator, Imam Samudra, were taken straight to heaven after their deaths.
THE delighted family and spiritual adviser of executed Bali bombers Amrozi and Mukhlas have hailed their martyrdom, claiming the brothers died with smiles on their faces and that there will be 1001 jihadis to take their place.
Abdul Rohim, son of Muslim preacher Abu Bakar Bashir who set the bombers on their path of mass murder, said he had examined the pair's faces after they were shot by firing squads early on Sunday.
"They were smiling, and the perfume of the bodies was not from the soap used to clean them; it was an extraordinary perfume," Mr Rohim told The Australian.
Mr Rohim warned that the executions could now unleash 1001 jihadis.
"The Government thinks that by executing them it can stop the jihad," Mr Rohim said.
"But the point is that this will not extinguish the jihad.
"It's not possible to extinguish the light of Allah. The jihad will always continue."
The boasts came as Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said Australia continued to receive credible threats of attacks after Sunday's execution of the terrorists.
"Regrettably, we continue to receive credible information that Bali remains an attractive target for terrorist activity," Mr Smith told parliament.
However, the Foreign Minister said there had been no change to the threat level cited in Australian Government travel advice.
It remained at the second-highest level - "reconsider your need to travel" - the level it has been pegged at since the attack on October 12, 2002, in which 202 people, 88 of them Australians, were killed.
The statement came as recently installed Bali Governor I Made Mangku Pastika - the former local police chief who headed the investigation into the terrorist atrocity - warned against violent retaliation for the executions.
Indonesian authorities also revealed they continued to be at a high level of alert after several bomb threats over the past week, including on Australia's Jakarta embassy.
"I hope the people will regard (the executions) as a normal thing, and not react excessively," Mr Pastika said.
He attempted to pour cold water on the claims of holiness being made by the families of Imam Samudra and the bin Nurhasyim brothers.
Hundreds of supporters briefly clashed with police as the bodies of Mukhlas and Amrozi - the latter dubbed the "smiling assassin" for his courtroom antics - arrived by helicopter at their village of Tenggulun, in east Java, on Sunday.
Bashir, who responded to the two brothers' final wishes by praying over their bodies shortly before they were interred had yesterday morning resumed his schedule of preaching jihad in Muslim boarding schools across Indonesia.
Bashir, the co-founder of Jemaah Islamiah, was jailed on a conspiracy charge related to the bombings before being released in 2006.
Female members of the family visited the brothers' grave site to tidy up and pray, having been denied access to the area during Sunday's burial ceremony according to strict Muslim funeral rules. Yasyrifah binti Nurhasyim, the sister aged in between Amrozi - who was 46, and Mukhlas, who was 48 - was praying at the graves with her daughter, Aulia Sahida.
A defiant Yasyrifah said the family was proud of her brothers' "achievement". "We're relieved, because they've become martyrs," she said.
She added that the graves, which are set apart from the main cemetery in Tenggulun village, would be kept simple.
"A fence will be put around the graves," she said. "But no sort of shrine will be built. We're worried it could become an altar (for ancestor worship)."
Muslim leaders in Java often struggle with trying to keep the faithful from following the older syncretic aspects of the religion that are holdovers from a pre-Islamic past in Indonesia - such as ancestor worship.
Family and hardline followers such as Abdul Rohim were busy yesterday offering interpretations of the arrival of three large birds of prey over Tenggulun village on Sunday, moments before the bodies of Amrozi and Mukhlas arrived. The birds wheeled high in the air for several minutes and then separated, two flying in one direction and the third flying separately in another.
Followers are interpreting this as a sign that the brothers and their co-conspirator, Imam Samudra, were taken straight to heaven after their deaths.
Source: The Australian
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