Pentagon repatriates Malaysian prisoners who admitted to war crimes linked to Bali bombing

WASHINGTON - The US military said on Dec 18 that it had repatriated two Malaysian men from its prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who admitted to committing war crimes for an affiliate of Al-Qaeda that carried out deadly bombings in Bali, Indonesia, in 2002.

The rare transfer, a day after the Pentagon released another prisoner to the custody of Kenya, reduced the detainee population to 27 men.

The freed prisoners, Mohammed Nazir Lep, 47, and Mohammed Farik Amin, 49, had been held by the US since 2003. They were returned to the custody of the Malaysian government, and supervision of its deradicalisation programme, through a diplomatic arrangement that was reached as part of their guilty pleas in January.

Before they left, the men gave sworn testimony that prosecutors hope will be useful in the eventual trial of Encep Nurjaman, the Indonesian prisoner known as Hambali.

Hambali is accused of being the mastermind of the Bali bombings and other terrorist attacks in 2002 and 2003 as a leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah movement. The men admitted to being accessories to the terror attack, after the fact, by helping Hambali elude capture.

All three men were held for years after their capture in Thailand in the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) secret prison network that used torture in its interrogations. They were transferred to the military prison in Cuba in 2006, but the military did not formally charge them at the war court until 2021.

Mr Brian Bouffard, a lawyer for Nazir at Guantanamo, said his client plans to live a quiet life with his family. “He has been punished many times over for his long-ago involvement with the wrong people, and we hope one day that his torturers and their enablers might face accountability for the evil they have done in our name.”

At their sentencing hearing in January, Farik showed sketches to the military jury that he had made portraying his first months in CIA custody – both the circumstances of his interrogation and his conditions at a “black site” prison in Afghanistan.

As part of their plea, the men admitted to training at Al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan in 2000 and agreeing to become suicide bombers. Instead, upon their return to South-east Asia, they ran errands for Hambali and acted as couriers for funds that were traced to suspected accomplices in the bombings on the resort island of Bali on Oct 12, 2002, that killed 202 people, most of them Australian.

Under the plea agreement, the jury was instructed to sentence the men to 20 to 25 years for their crimes. The jurors returned a 23-year sentence. But the panel was unaware that, separately, through administrative credit from the military judge and a side deal with a Pentagon official overseeing the court, the men would be returned home sooner in exchange for their cooperation with the government.

Ms Christine Funk, a lawyer for Farik, said he “looks forward to the opportunity to continue living a life of purpose, taking care of his parents and pursuing a career that best reflects his skills and talents”.

Some relatives of those killed in the Bali bombings expressed disappointment that the men would get such short sentences but said they were hopeful that their testimony would help convict Hambali, who has been identified as a former leader of the movement that carried out the bombings.

Malaysia’s Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail on Dec 18 confirmed that the two men have returned to their home country.

“The government has constructed a reintegration programme that is comprehensive for the two individuals, which includes support services, welfare and medical screenings,” said Datuk Seri Saifuddin in a statement.

Besides Hambali, five other prisoners are in pre-trial proceedings at Guantanamo Bay for the Sept 11, 2001, attacks and the bombing of the USS Cole on Oct 12, 2000. Also, an Iraqi prisoner who pleaded guilty is serving a sentence that ends in 2032.

Another five prisoners are effectively held as “indefinite detainees” in the war on terrorism, three of whom have never been charged but have been found to be too dangerous to release through an intelligence review process. The other two are Ramzi Binalshibh, who was in 2023 found to be mentally unfit to face trial in the Sept 11 conspiracy case, and Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, who is serving a life sentence for conspiring to commit war crimes as a media adviser to Osama bin Laden.

That leaves 15 men, most of them Yemeni citizens, who were brought there by the George W. Bush administration and were subsequently found to be eligible for transfer to countries that will help absorb them into society while monitoring them for signs of radicalisation. NYTIMES, THE STAR/ASIA NEWS NETWORK