In Reply to: Rational my ass posted by cliff on Sunday, 2. October 2005 at 15:15 Bali Time:
Everyone is not on the same side.
The US would not release Hambali because they would have just let him go. They should never release him. If they could get their hands on Bashir, they would do the same.
Bashir wasn't convicted because the authorites did not want to convict him. Simple as that. The court system in Bali and Indonesia is not fair in any way at all. The Corbee case proved that beyond a doubt. There you had all sorts of doubt but 100% conviction rate.
For Bashir, everyone admits he was complicit in the bombings but got basically nothing of a sentence.
The double standard is because one was seen as creating trouble for the locals if they convicted him and the other seen as a tourist that most of the locals in Bali seemed to want to convict (Corbee). It didn't seem to matter that one was involved in killing people and the other was convicted of smuggling a plant that killed no one.
I know you want tourist dollars and that is likely at the root of all of this. I am saddened that some people just won't listen to warnings and keep travelling to a place that is so unsafe just because some people want their money.
If you want more tourist dollars, just telling people to keep going to Bali isn't going to cut it. You will just face the same problem again when another bombing happens.
You need to crack down and fix the problem. The people need to rise up and instead of applauding the conviction of a tourist, you need to protect the tourists. If that doesn't happen, Bali is finished as a tourist destination and all the words in the world won't save it.