Execute all the terrorists

In 1985, I was invited by the United Nations to give a speech at a UN crime conference being held in Milan, Italy. My speech which was given in the first week of September was on terrorism.

Generally when I gave an address at UN Congresses, it would be from the floor like all delegates, non government agencies and experts but the Italian army had requested that I give my speech from the podium as they wanted to televise it so that it could be played back on TV that night all over Italy. They had previously read my speech. I gave my speech right after the solicitor general of Canada, Perrin Beatty gave his address.

I didn’t want to give a wishy washy speech. I was angry that terrorism was on the rise and had been for years.

I was mindful that in February 14, 1985 in the Philippines, Muslims protesting U.S. and Japanese support of the popularly elected Marcos government, claimed responsibility for a hotel fire in Manila which killed 30, including five Americans.

On March 8, 1985, a car bomb killed over 80 people in Beirut, Lebanon. The massive and deadly device exploded outside the Beirut home of a Shia terrorist leader who had inspired the terrorist attacks on U.S. installations which had left hundreds of Americans dead.

On March 8, 1985, in the United Arab Emirates, an 18-year-old Arab Muslim admitted that he had planned a suicide mission to destroy a Jordanian airliner with 107 passengers and crew aboard. The wannabe mass murderer was arrested in Dubai following the igniting of the bomb's detonator. The bomb itself fizzled. The explosive device had been timed to explode while the aircraft was en route to Amman, Jordan.

On April 12, 1985 in Spain, a 20-pound bomb was placed in a restaurant catering to U.S. servicemen. It killed 18 Spaniards and wounded 82, fifteen of whom were Americans. The three-story building outside Madrid collapsed.

On April 20, 1985, a truck packed with 2,200 pounds of TNT was deployed in an Islamic suicide operation against an Israeli convoy between Sidon and Tyre. All Jewish personnel; estimated to be 120, were either killed or wounded in the blast.

On June 23, 1985, a bomb was detonated on an Air India Boeing 747 with 329 people aboard as it crossed the Atlantic, killing everyone. The Montreal to London flight exploded in mid-air off the Irish coast. The terrorists who called themselves the ‘Peace Conquerors’ said it was in a response to "global pollution" and that they "did not care if innocents were killed. It turned out that it was another group of Indian terrorists who committed the crime.

On July 1, 1985, a bomb hidden in luggage bound for India exploded in the international terminal of Rome's airport, injuring fifteen baggage handlers. The luggage arrived either from Beirut or from Athens. The suitcase was to be loaded on an Italian Alitalia flight to New Delhi. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Sikh Dashmesh Regiment.

Ten times that many terrorist’s acts occurred around the world from January of that year to the day of my speech. I was angry and I wanted the world to know that there was only one way to deal with terrorists who had chosen as a way of life to indiscriminately murder men, women, children and babies.

I was also mindful of the fact that in a great many of the terrorist incidents both during that year and in earlier years, the motives of the terrorists was to force governments holding other terrorists in prisons around the world, to release them.

For example, on June 7, 1985, two Shi'ite Hizballah (Party of Allah) terrorists operating out of Greece hijacked a TWA Boeing 727 en route from Athens to Rome with over 100 Americans on board. Flight 847 with a total of 145 passengers and eight crewmembers, was forced to make several stops, including two in the terrorist safe haven of Algiers, Algeria before finally landing in Beirut, Lebanon. It was there where U.S. navy diver Robert Stetham was shot and killed.

The Islamic hijackers made a demand that the government of Kuwait release fellow Shia terrorists being held in Kuwait in connection with the December 1983 bombings of the U.S. and French Embassies. They also wanted two Lebanese Muslims freed who were being held by Spain for the murder of a Libyan diplomat in Madrid the previous September. But central to their demand was the release of 766 convicted Shi'ite Hizballah terrorists being held in Israel.

It was on this point that the United States (who previously stated that they would never negotiate with terrorists) capitulated. Negotiating on behalf of the terrorists who had murdered three hundred U.S. Marines in Beirut, President Ronald Reagan asked Israel to release 435 convicted Hizballah terrorists as ransom, which Israel did.

In my speech, I recommended the following;

All terrorists as soon as they are apprehended; should be tried within a week if all the evidence against them is available to them and the prosecutors.

If they are convicted, they should automatically be sentenced to death.

The supreme court of the country they are tried in should drop everything and study the transcripts of the trial to satisfy all the members of that court that the terrorists were given a fair trial. If their trials were fair, then the executions should be carried out within a few days at most. If not fair, they would be retried.

The executions should be by hanging and in a secret location other than where they were imprisoned unless the executions are off shore on a remote island.

Their bodies should be cremated and placed in metal containers and dumped far out to sea so that there would be no place where their families and their terrorist followers could mourn their deaths.

The term terrorist would include; the planners of terrorism, bomb makers, those who place the bombs or ignite them, those who provide transportation or safe houses for terrorists, those who shoot innocent people and also those who finance terrorist activities.

Once a terrorist is arrested, no one other than their lawyers would be permitted to see them and after they are sentenced, no one, including their lawyers would be permitted to see them because their appeals to the Supreme Court would be automatic and it also included their priests or imams since I felt that they can make their peace with God on their own.

Needless to say, my speech had a great impact in the news media. Excerpts of it were published all over the world and it was televised in Italy that night when my voice was dubbed over with an Italian voice.

Obviously, I wanted quick trials and executions so that other terrorists wouldn’t commit acts of terrorism to get the convicted terrorists freed so that they could commit more acts of terrorism. I wanted them executed for the same reason I gave in the previous paragraph. Hanging them in a secret place would prevent crowds of supporters surrounding the prison. Cremating their bodies and placing the ashes in small metal containers and dumping them far out to sea would prevent other terrorists having a place to mourn over them.

When the Nazi leaders were executed after the Second World War, their bodies were cremated and their ashes were thrown in an unknown river. They have no graves in which their families, friends or followers or for that matter, neo-Nazis skinheads can mourn over.

None of the many nations present at my speech followed my advice and as to be expected, during the following years, terrorism increased and many thousands upon thousands of innocent victims continued to be murdered by terrorists.

I now want to tell you of the Bali bombing that took place in the year 2002. Bali is a beautiful island in the Indian Ocean and is part of the archipelago of islands of Indonesia. Its area is only 2,175 square miles and 93% of the population is Hindu, almost 5% are Muslim, less that 2% are Christian and less than 1 percent are Buddhists. The Island is known more for its tourist industry. My wife and I visited the Island in 2005 after I gave a speech at a UN conference in Bangkok, Thailand on, (besides another topic) terrorism and how to manage explosives) We also visited the site and the memorial in Bali where terrorists did the bombing.

The 2002 Bali bombings occurred on October 12th 2002 in the tourist district of Kuta. The attack was the deadliest act of terrorism in the history of Indonesia, killing 202 people, 164 of whom were foreign nationals, and 38 Indonesian citizens, not to forget the 209 people who were injured.

The attack in Kuta involved the detonation of two bombs: a backpack-mounted device carried by a suicide bomber and a large car bomb, both of which were detonated in and near two popular nightclubs in Kuta.

At five minutes after ten that night, a suicide bomber inside the nightclub, Paddy's Pub detonated a bomb in his backpack, causing many patrons, with or without injuries, to immediately flee into the street. None of the patrons while in the pub were actually killed at that time. Fifteen seconds later, a second and much more powerful car bomb hidden inside a white Mitsubishi van parked on the street between the Paddy’s club and the Sari Club across the street was detonated by another suicide bomber. He waited until all the patrons were fleeing the pubs to get to the street. It was then that all the deaths occurred. Damage to the densely populated residential and commercial district was immense, destroying neighbouring buildings and shattering windows several blocks away. The car bomb explosion left a one meter deep crater.

The dead were mainly Western tourists and holiday-makers in their 20s and 30s who were in or near Paddy's Pub or the Sari Club, but also including many Balinese Indonesians working or living nearby, or simply passing by. Hundreds more people suffered horrific burns and other injuries. The largest group among those killed were holidayers from Australia with 88 fatalities.

The terrorists assembled 12 plastic filing cabinets filled with explosives. The cabinets, each containing potassium chlorate, aluminum powder, sulfur mixture with a TNT booster, was connected by 150 meters of PETN-filled detonating cord. Ninety-four RDX electric detonators were fitted to the TNT. The total weight of the van bomb was 1.125 tons. The large, high-temperature blast damage produced by this mixture was similar to a thermobaric explosive, although the bombers may not have known this.

The organization immediately suspected of responsibility for the bombing was Jemaah Islamiyah, an Islamist group allegedly led by radical cleric Abu Bakar Bashir that has been linked in many news reports to the al-Qaeda network. A week after the blasts Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera put to air an audio-cassette purportedly carrying a recorded voice message from Osama Bin Laden saying that the Bali bombings were in direct retaliation for support of the United States' war on terror and Australia's role in the liberation of East Timor.

On April 30th 2003, the first charges related to the Bali bombings were made against Amrozi bin Haji Nurhasyim, known as Amrozi, for allegedly buying the explosives and the van used in the bombings. On August 8th he was found guilty and sentenced to death. Another participant in the bombing, Imam Samudra, was sentenced to death on September 10th. Amrozi's brother, Ali Imron, who had expressed remorse for his part in the bombing, was sentenced to life imprisonment on September 18th. A fourth accused, Ali Gufron, another participant in the bombing was sentenced to death on 1 October, 2003.

While the three waited for their executions by firing squad, they were imprisoned at the Batu Prison on the 117 square-kilometre Nusakambangan Island just off the coast of the port town of Cilacap in Central Java. It is a jail island. It can only be reached by ferry.

Indonesia usually executes condemned convicts by firing squad in undisclosed locations in the dead of night. The prisoners are told at least three days in advance of their pending executions.

The three wooden posts five metres apart, with a cross piece on each post, had previously been erected in a remote hilly area of the island in a clearing in a forest that was rimmed by orange and mandarin orchards. The execution site was three kilometres away from Batu prison. The three condemned men were secured to the posts just after midnight on November 9th, 2008.

The Bali three bombers faced 12 shooters from the elite Brimob police brigade. Only three of the 12 had live rounds in their SS1 assault rifles. That meant that only one man in each group of four had live rounds in his rifle. In actuality, each of the condemned men would be shot by one rifleman. They were tightly bound to the wooden crosses. They could have chosen to die sitting or lying down. They chose to stand. Their eyes were left uncovered at their request. Imam Samudra, Amrozi Nurhasyim and Ali Ghufron were executed exactly at 15 minutes after midnight. The three bombers died instantly.

The execution of these three terrorists was quite proper in my opinion. Permitting them to live in prison for the rest of their lives would have been an insult to the dead victims and their families.

But what followed, after their deaths was a big mistake. You may recall that earlier in this piece, I said that in 1985, I suggested that the bodies of convicted terrorists should be cremated and their ashes dumped at sea in metal containers. That didn’t happen with the Bali bombers.

Each of their corpses was bathed according to Sharia Law by a family member. Two of the bombers' bodies were taken by helicopters to Tenggulun their hometown in Java respectively, where thousands of sympathizers and onlookers turned out the following day for their funeral processions before hundreds of emotional supporters. Some hard-liners present shouted "God is great!" and called the men holy warriors. Imam Samudra's body was flown to Serang, Banten, amid "welcome martyrs" banner displayed at the cemetery.

The dead bombers were honoured where they were buried. This is what I tried to stop happening when I gave my speech in 1985.

Imam Samudra had urged from the grave that his Muslim brothers should educate their children to become terrorists and killers of non-Muslims. The chilling words were from the last will of Samudra, released in his home village in West Java after he was buried. Lacking any remorse or guilt, Samudra urged his fellow Muslims to fill their lives with the murder of non-believers, saying the title of terrorist was holier than that of Ulama or Muslim scholar.

If the nations had followed my advice, this man would never have been permitted to write his will and give it to his relatives while waiting for his execution.

Repeated postponements had frustrated survivors and relatives of victims, and enabled the bombers to rally supporters from behind bars by calling for revenge attacks in interviews aired on local television stations or published in newspapers and books.

In my speech, I recommended total isolation of terrorists after conviction and sentence. This was not adhered too and now we see the results. They were permitted to rave on about their exploits and their calls for revenge attacks to follow.

Those revenge attacks took place again in 2005 on the Island of Bali when again terrorists planted another bomb on the island in a restaurant on a main street in Kuta, killing a number of innocent people.

Now obviously there will be people who will say that my proposals were inhumane. To them, I ask this rhetorical question. “How would you feel if your brothers or sisters or wives or husbands or your children were killed in that bombing?” Were the actions of these heartless bombers humane? Did they give one tinker’s dam about their victims or their families and friends?

I summed up my speech with the following statement.

“When an innocent person dies as a result of the act of a terrorist, his or her death creates three kinds of victims. The first victim is the intended victim. The second victim is a family member or friend of the intended victim. But there is another kind of victim. It is the peripheral victim. We are all peripheral victims who are not the intended victim or a family member or friend of the intended victim for when that victim dies, a part of us dies also.”