Families of those killed in the 2002 Bali bombings testify at hearing for Guantanamo detainees

FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) — Relatives of some of the 202 people killed in a pair of bombings on the resort island of Bali testified Wednesday of lives wrecked and families shattered in the attacks more than 20 years ago, speaking at a U.S. sentencing hearing at Guantanamo Bay for two Malaysian men in the case.

For the American commission on the U.S. military base in Cuba, the winding down of this case is comparatively rare in the prolonged prosecutions of deadly attacks by extremist groups in the opening years of this century. Prosecutors are still pursuing plea agreements with defendants in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and other cases at Guantanamo.

“The reach of this atrocity knew no bounds, and has affected very many people,” Matthew Arnold of Birmingham, England, said of the bombings on Oct. 12, 2002, that killed his brother, who was in Bali for a rugby tournament.

Arnold described his brother’s distraught fiancee ending the couple’s pregnancy after the bombings, of his father dying still in grief over his eldest son’s death, and of Arnold’s own marriage breaking up as he devoted his life to his brother’s legacy.

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