Two Malaysians admit to conspiring in 2002 Bali blasts

The Guantanamo Bay prisoners will give evidence against Hambali in plea deal

Two Malaysian prisoners at Guantanamo Bay pleaded guilty on Jan 16 to conspiring in the October 2002 nightclub bombings in the resort island of Bali, Indonesia, that killed more than 200 people.

The guilty pleas were the first step in a slowly unfolding proceeding that began when the men, Mohammed Farik Amin, 48, and Mohammed Nazir Lep, 47, were charged in 2021 - 18 years after their capture in Thailand.

Sentencing is scheduled for next week.

The pleas were seen as a breakthrough for military commission prosecutors, who had been seeking deals to resolve long-running cases against former prisoners of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Similar talks with the accused plotters of the attacks of Sept 11, 2001 also known as the 9/11 attacks - ended in 2023 after the Biden administration declined to consider healthcare and confinement conditions sought by the prisoners.

Both defendants were held for years in the CIA's secret overseas prison network.

They were transferred to Guantanamo Bay in 2006 for trial at the special national-security court that former president George W.

Bush set up after the Sept 11 attacks.

While in agency custody, according to their lawyers, they were tortured, along with accused ringleader Encep Nurjaman, an Indonesian prisoner known as Hambali.

In pleading guilty, Amin and Lep agreed to testify against Hambali, the former leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah movement, an affiliate of Al-Qaeda in South-east Asia.