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Episode details

World Service,21 Feb 2020,26 mins

SeriesCrossing Divides

Meeting the bombers who killed my mum

Heart and Soul

Available for over a year

Sarah, together with her father and brother, meets the bombers who killed her mother as she and her family attempt to understand how the men who carried it out could be followers of the same faith – and claim to carry out the act in the name of Islam. On her fifth birthday Sarah’s mother died from injuries sustained in a terrorist attack. She was the victim of a car bomb that exploded outside the Australian embassy in the Indonesian capital Jakarta in 2004. It was one of a series of bombings carried out by a local Islamist militant group Jemaah Islamiyah or J-I who were responsible for the country’s worst terrorist attack – the bombing on the holiday island of Bali in 2002 that killed more than 200 people. J-I members Rois and Ahmad Hassan are now on death row for their role in the bombing that killed Sarah’s mother. Rebecca Henschke witnesses the extraordinary meeting between Sarah and her mother’s killers on Indonesia’s highest security prison island. Presenter/producer: Rebecca Henschke Photo: Sarah (centre), Hassan (L) and Rois (R). Credit: Haryo Wirawan.

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