Episode 6: People who do not know love

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Prologue: Why was I alive?

Joe Frost

If you ever wondered what it feels like to be blown up, well... it hurts. 

In the days following the bombing, my body just ached.  

My legs were scratched raw by the sand blast, but the overall feeling of pain pulsed from within. As best I can tell, it was a result of the shockwave that had come from the explosion – a wall of energy strong enough to knock a person to the ground feels like a full-body punch. 

Particularly on that first day, at Sanglah Hospital, I winced a lot. Rolled my shoulders, shifted my neck – made the kinds of movements you do when you’re in pain and trying to trick the body into thinking you can half-heartedly stretch your way to a cure. 

After spending the morning at the hospital, I returned to the hotel, where I was told we would depart Bali that evening, but there was a doctor on the phone who wanted to speak to me before I went to the airport.  

The doctor on the line explained that he needed to give me a once-over, ensure I was all right, and give me medical clearance to fly.  

He had been kind, caring and compassionate, and so I want to emphasise that I said what I said next with absolutely no malice, but it’s still not something I’m particularly proud of.  

“With all due respect Doc, fuck your clearance. I’m on that plane.”  

My tough talk did about as much as you'd expect, nothing. And so I received another check-up that afternoon, with the focus being what effect the holes the bomb had blown through my eardrums would have on the flight. 

In a nutshell, the doctor said, it would not only be fine, my perforated eardrums actually meant that the change in pressure as the plane climbed to cruising altitude wouldn’t affect me at all. No more eardrums meant no more popping eardrums.  

So I guess that was a win. 

Beyond the physical aches, which would fade in short order, I had an existential question that has never been answered, and so never really gone away. 

Why was I alive?  

There had been 18 of us from Newcastle on Jimbaran Beach, so when I replayed the events that had unfolded, I couldn’t pinpoint exactly who was situated where when the second bomb went off and the shrapnel flew. 

The information I had for certain was my immediate vicinity, at the northern end of the table. 

To my left had been Penny Anicich, with her husband Paul standing behind her chair. They were both now in Singapore, which spoke to the seriousness of their injuries.  

To my right had been Colin and Fiona Zwolinski.  

They died on the beach.  

In the middle of all that carnage, I had come away with blown-out eardrums. Beyond ‘wow, that’s lucky’ I had no explanation for how it was that I hadn’t ended up in a hospital bed – or in the morgue.   

Why am I alive? That one doesn't go away.  

But it's hard to have too much sympathy, even for yourself, when that’s the struggle you can’t seem to get on top. 

Because a lot of people were not alive. 

Act 1: The brothers  

Isaac Zwolinski was 17 years old when he and his mates from St Francis Xaiver's College in Newcastle made the trip to Bali. 

The boys had spent the first few days surfing, swimming and enjoying the island’s party scene. 

Isaac Zwolinski

At the time, that’s what we were doing and we'd had like, two or three nights out before that, so, and that's, we were 17, so it's like your first time going out – drinking Bintangs and smoking those, what are they called? Gudangs, those rank cigarettes they used to have over there. Yeah, it was good fun. 

Joe Frost

Ben Zwolinski was 14. He arrived in Bali on the 1st of October 2005, a few days after his older brother, having spent the days prior on holiday in India with his parents. 

Ben Zwolinski

I remember just arriving, getting an airport transfer, busy streets, kind of just being a passenger, really, just says ‘what's going on’. And then getting to the hotel room, Zackie popped in and said, G'day. I think we went for a quick walk around the streets, and then came back and like, all right, I just all of a sudden, felt tired, went to sleep. 

Joe Frost

With their youngest son sleeping off the effects of a long flight and their oldest son happy to chill with his mates, Colin and Fiona Zwolinski made the decision to join the rest of Team Newcastle for dinner on Jimbaran Beach. 

As word began to filter back to the hotel that a bombing had occurred at the very spot his parents had gone for dinner, Isaac waited up, watching the news with his mates, occasionally looking in on his younger brother.  

Isaac Zwolinski

Checked in him a few times at night and didn't wake him up. Because I didn't think, you don't think that, what that – you'd never think in a million years, what's happened, happened. 

We had the TV on all night, we're out awake all night, and they had mum on the TV, and it was like a thing that kept going, and she looked okay, like, from what we could tell. But it's so we sort of thought, ‘Oh, she must be okay.’ She just looks like, she's been like, like others have, you know, yeah, bloody, but not bad.  

But she was obviously dead in that video. 

Joe Frost

Having slept through the night, Ben Zwolinski awoke on October 2 to the news of the bombing. Still, the conversations he was having that morning were all reassuring. 

Until they weren’t. 

Ben Zwolinski

We're just hanging out in the pool. We're talking about. It's like, oh yeah. Like, you know, ‘I think everyone's okay, yeah, surely everyone's okay.’ Like, that was the conversation.  

And I never felt anything odd. But I think cos of our age, I think perhaps some of the parents were wise to what was going on before we knew. And we, everyone kind of had a meeting with some AFP officers, and we went in.  

They gave us the rundown of what was happening. ‘Show us your passport so we can get you on the flight’, etcetera. ‘We'll book you a flight’, all those types of things. Get everyone on the same flight out. 

And then we're just like, ‘oh yeah, where's mum and dad?’  

And then everyone in the room just like panicked, opened their eyes, and like, ‘ahh, they're uncounted for’ was their words.  

Joe Frost

Unaccounted for. It's hardly a definitive means of saying someone is dead – particularly not to a pair of teenage boys. 

I asked Isaac if the phrasing had left him feeling ambiguous – even hopeful – about his parents’ fate. Or if it had been clear from the outset what ‘unaccounted for’ truly meant. 

Isaac Zwolinski

Oh, it was that time, yeah. That was like them telling us, yeah, mum and dad are dead. Like, that was, to me, it was very clear, like, the way, I can't remember the exact words, but that was sort of the... Yeah. It was pretty clear to me, yeah, yeah.  

Joe Frost

Isaac and Ben flew out of Bali on the evening October 2, with the rest of the group from Newcastle. 

An aunt met them at Sydney airport and took them back to the house in the surfside suburb of Merewether that their parents had made a home, but would never again set foot in. 

That’s not to say the boys were alone, however, as friends and family from across the globe rallied around them. 

Ben Zwolinski

We had so many people coming through the house. And all great intentions and worry and things like that, of, of... I don't think the flowers were showing up yet, but fuck, there was some flowers going through the house at one stage.   

And then, and, you know, family members coming in from from, you know, my uncles coming from everywhere, and their families coming and then we just felt like we just had a because obviously we just... Yeah, it feels like we had a there was just a revolving door out the front of people coming and going and just spending time together and things like that, which is some of the best times when you're in grief, is just like being, you know, everyone pulls together and just is with everyone. 

Joe Frost

Also among the visitors were police officers. 

Ben Zwolinski

We had more AFP officers, or police of some description, come to the house and find hairbrushes, toothbrushes, razors and things like that, to test for DNA to DNA match the bodies... Then I think we got like, 100% confirmation. You know, a few days later that this was, was your parents, and they've now deceased. 

Joe Frost

Colin and Fiona Zwolinski were no longer unaccounted for. And so their two sons needed to tend to the formalities of death. 

Sorting their parents’ estate, their father’s business and their own home were financial challenges that would take years to settle. 

But looming far larger on the horizon was their parents’ funeral.  

Saying goodbye to the people who raised you is an awful prospect at any age, but for two teenagers – who had both their parents taken from them in the most violent manner, and on such a public stage – it must have seemed impossible. 

But Ben got up in front of more than 1000 mourners at Newcastle’s Christ Church Cathedral, Isaac standing beside him, and that 14-year-old boy spoke with grace, compassion and wisdom well beyond his tender age.  

Ben Zwolinski

I just felt like I had to, I don't know. I've done a bit of public speaking at school, like, I mean, at school assemblies or whatever. I felt like I was in a good head space to do it. It came naturally, I suppose, is the best way – and the words felt right. 

I felt like it was a powerful message, and for me to get up there and to show that we're kind of doing okay, but it's pretty fucked, what happened. 

Joe Frost

You do remember some of the things you said? 

Ben Zwolinski

Yeah, yeah. The one particular was ‘they were taken from us by people who do not know love’ - or something to that sentiment. And that was the one that remained true, like I always tried to take a stance of not to be... not to be angry, it's just more confused as to why you did it... It set in deep with me.  

It was more about them than it was ever about us. It was never really... we weren't, they weren't targeted or anything like that. It was a random bombing. It's just, it's just horrific that it happened to us, to both of our parents, particularly. 

Joe Frost

I’ll never forget that day. I had been so full of anger and sadness. Just torn apart by the sheer injustice of everything that had happened.  

And yet here was the kid who had lost the most – far more than I could even fathom – and he was speaking of the need for love, refusing to give in to the anger he had every right to feel.  

If I can say so, I was proud of Ben Zwolinski that day.  

I was not the only one. 

Isaac Zwolinski

He did the eulogy, which, fuck, it was – so proud of him for doing that. 

He took it on. And he's a good, he's into public speaking and he's good at it, but still to do that, yeah, yeah. I did my grandma's years later, and that was the hardest thing I've ever done – and that was not just my grandma, but someone very close to me. But to do it for your parents, like, God, yeah, I was struggling just to stand up there with him, yeah. 

Joe Frost

Now, 20 years later, I asked Ben if he ever thought about those people, the ones who did not know love, who took his parents from him and his brother. 

Ben Zwolinski

The guys who had the backpack on? Probably not so much. Visualising that kind of or thinking about that makes me, obviously quite sad. 

But thinking about the, ‘What message are you sending? What were you trying - what are you trying to say here?’  

... I do make an attempt not to feel angry. I'd rather, I'd rather live in confusion than anger, I suppose. 

Joe Frost

As for Isaac, does he think of the people who so cruelly forced his life down this unforeseen path? 

Isaac Zwolinski

No, not at all. I've tried to understand why people would do something like this, but I sort of... this isn't... what I've gone through, it's not their problem. They've created it. They're not going to help me. So there's no point in really worrying about them. I’ve sort of just tried to, always tried to focus on myself otherwise you’re not going to get anywhere with it. It’s only going to get you upset. 

Joe Frost

Isaac told me of his gratitude to all the people who helped them over the years. Ben said that in becoming an orphan, his family actually became bigger, as aunts, uncles, cousins and friends drew closer in profound ways. 

But for Isaac and Ben to come out of this tragedy and grow into good fathers, good husbands, good mates, speaks volumes of the people who raised them.  

Isaac Zwolinski

Dad was, he's had at one point, he had 300 employees. So he was worked a lot, worked overseas a lot, but he loved taking us to sport on a weekend. That was his thing.   

He would try his best to make as much time for us, which wasn't enough when we were young, but at the time, he sort of put things into what he had going on at work. He did his best, yeah, instilled a lot of a lot of like, different ways of looking on the world and his experiences. He was so well traveled as well. So yeah, he was so good at keeping relationships and everything like that. So yeah, he instilled a lot of that on us. 

Ben Zwolinski

Mum was a, yeah, she was a nurse and midwife. And she was very fit and loved running. Had done a few triathlons. 

More family orientated than I give credit to... and now I understand, having kids, now I understand, you know how nice it is to spend time with your, with family and stuff like that.  

So I think... I often think, I wish I got to know them better, like it's such a cliche thing to say, and I think everyone needs to, needs to get to know their parents better, because it's, you know, I never got to have a beer with them at the pub or anything like that. You know, I wasn't even fucking drinking coffee at that, you know, I never went out for coffee with mum or dad. You know, things are those little, small things that I miss, missed and now miss. 

Act 2: The heads 

Joe Frost

Back in Bali, the grief emanating from what had happened on 1 October was coupled with the scary reality that the people who had committed these awful crimes remained at large. 

For the Aussie authorities, now that the affected Australians were home safe, the focus could shift to the vital task of bringing the perpetrators to justice. 

They already had two main suspects: Noordin Top and Azhari Husin. 

David Craig was a Detective Superintendent with the Australian Federal Police. He was new to his role in counterterrorism, but he was an experienced investigator. So he spent his first few weeks on the case in Canberra, which was a frustrating necessity. 

David Craig

I'm a very hands-on investigator. I like to be at the crime scene, I like to get a sense of things, I like to speak to people personally, but as it was, I was getting statements and doing interviews via interpreters. It was frustrating but it was necessary to have that big, strategic look over what was happening. 

Then has things settled down a bit as far as our response to human life, then I flew to Bali and picked up the reins there for the forward command post there, where we still had a couple of FBI agents and AFP were obviously there, as well as the Indonesian national police and I took over command of that setup.  

Joe Frost

Did you defer to the Indonesian authority at that stage, given it was on Indonesian soil, or was it your command?  

David Craig

Oh, no, no, it was. They definitely have jurisdiction, they have command. We are simply there as advisors. We're unarmed. We only have expertise, and we can only give it if they want it. 

When I say command, I was in charge of all the AFP that were in Bali and I was the main interface with the high-ranked members of the counter-terrorism team in the Indonesian national police. 

Joe Frost

One of the first lines of enquiry they pursued was to look at how the bombs built by Azhari had been set off in previous attacks he had been involved in. And a common factor had been using mobile phones as a detonation device. 

David Craig

The first thing we're going to do is we look at cell-dump information. We're looking for the last phone call made before that bomb went off or, you know, simultaneously. So how many phone calls, where the phones were? 

Of course we're talking about, you know, very, very, you know, large population of people, so we're having at that analyse, analysing through that looking for it.  

What we didn't know was Azhari, as clever as he was, he had decided to completely change away from that method and use direct detonation.  

So we spent a long time looking for – or some of my investigators and analysts – spent a long time looking for things that weren't even there, so we couldn't actually find how the bombs were detonated.  

He'd also moved away from large truck bombs which had predominantly been. He'd changed the type of explosives that he used then, so it was for the first time they were using TNT, which burned a lot more efficiently. So, we didn't get the good blast residue to identify the make-up of chemicals, where those chemicals could have been purchased from, who purchased those chemicals and things like that, burned a lot more, a lot cleaner.  

Joe Frost

Along with international law enforcement agencies, including the AFP, Indonesia’s dedicated anti-terrorism unit, called Detachment 88, and even the FBI, a completely different perspective had been brought in to help solve this crime. 

Former member of Jemaah Islamiyah Nasir Abbas – who had witnessed Noordin Top and Azhari Husin swear their allegiance to JI – came to Bali to help bring down his former charges. 

Nasir Abbas

I feel... I blame myself, because the person who did the bomb, used to be my student, used to be – I know before, especially Noordin and Azhari. I know them, and they still continue. So I feel unhappy, I feel frustrated, I feel guilty.  

So this is motivate me to help the police to stop them.  

So when the Bali bomb 1 October 2005 happen, police bring me to Bali. And I stay in Bali for more than one month. Every day, every single street, every single trash, we open, we look and later we find a piece of paper in the trash... They scratch, they drawing something there, the words the police not understand, and I understand what the meaning. That’s why I help the 2005 incident.  

Joe Frost

As is generally the case in solving crime, there was no real eureka moment – scraps of paper found in the trash and at the scenes of the crime served to help, but they were small pieces of a large jigsaw. 

There were, however, three pieces of the puzzle that would prove hugely consequential. And they were found almost right away. 

The grisly remains of the suicide bombers. 

David Craig 

The heads had been found in each bombsite, which they quite often are, because you know, they're using a backpack. It will usually just take out the middle torso. 

What the what bombers do is – or, what they did in this case – is they walk up and turn their back to the blast area. So they're actually using their body as a shape charge so the blast will go from the back of the body towards the people. So they identify the targets, turn 180° and then detonate... 

But the blast then leaves, usually from the hips down and from the, you know, mid-shoulders, mid-neck up. We retrieved those heads, with Indonesian police, of course. And very quickly - because we don't run the investigation so, I wouldn't have done it, but the Indonesian police immediately put these photos on posters and on TV a everything around the place, and they were extremely gruesome and no one recognised them because these heads are completely deformed. 

So no one was going to recognise them was very important to be able to identify who the bombers were, it's just a very important line of inquiry. So I spoke to our head of forensics as to what he would be able to do. And so I sent them up to Jakarta and they were going to – or they did – rebuild the heads.  

So they actually deglove the head, they actually take the skin off the skull, rebuild the head to the shape it would have been, and then put the skin wrap, if you like, back over the head and then re-photograph. 

With the heads of the bombers re-created, the new photos were sent out across Indonesia, asking for anyone who may have information to come forward. 

Joe Frost

The leads came pouring in, including one from a small village in Java.  

A villager said a photo of one of the bombers looked just like a local man, who had suddenly disappeared earlier in the year. A local man who came from a big family and attended a religious boarding school. A local man who had grown up, married, and had a child.  

The lead was followed up and, using DNA evidence, they were able to confirm the identity of the bomber. 

His name was Salik Firdaus. 

Act 3: The Chemist’s last stand 

Joe Frost

Identifying Salik Firdaus was a strong lead – the police could start to follow up on his final months leading up to October 1. Where he was and who he had been with were the kinds of answers that could lead to the capture of those responsible. 

One of the first people they managed to track down and bring in alive was a 28-year-old university student named Mohammad Cholili. 

David Craig

You know, he was sort of the protege for Azhari. 

The Indonesian police, because whenever there's going to be uses of force there, the AFP aren't involved because we're not, we're not police there - we are unarmed consultants, if you like. 

So we pulled away and there was a shoot-out at the Semarang bus terminal, and they captured Cholili. 

And he had a vest ready to detonate at the time. And he just didn't do it. And when I interviewed him a couple days later, I said, ‘Why? Why didn't you detonate?’  

He said, ‘I just wasn't ready yet.’  

Joe Frost

While he was not ready to end his life, Cholili was ready to talk. 

On the 9th of November – just short of six weeks after the 2005 Bali bombing – information from Cholili led Indonesian police to a small home in a suburban street in the city of Batu, in East Java. 

David Craig

A guy, I won't mention his name, an Indonesian police officer I know, yelled out through the loudspeaker saying, you know, ‘Azhari, we know you're in there. You need to come out. We have you surrounded, you know, come out quickly.’  

And that was answered simply with automatic gunfire coming from the house almost immediately.  

Joe Frost

After years on his trail, the Indonesian police finally had Dr Azhari Husin cornered.  

He was not going to surrender peacefully. 

Nor was he on his own – a young devotee known as Arman was alongside Azhari. And while Arman had barely spent six months as part of Al Qaeda in the Malay Archipelago, he was ready to die for the cause. 

David Craig

During what was a tit-for-tat volley of machine gunfire between the police and Azhari and Arman inside the house, the curtains were getting torn up, there was bits of concrete flying everywhere, there was smoke everywhere. There had to be thousands of rounds – or there were thousands of rounds exchanged.  

And then Azhari gets it, it all goes quiet and he yells out that he's been injured and he can't move. 

This is the time where he's putting on his suicide vest. 

And so the police, tactically, they move forward, get closer and closer to the building – hoping he's going to come and give himself up or he's wounded on the floor as he says he is – only to have a bomb thrown out the window at them from Azhari.  

So he put a vest on, he'd assembled the last parts of another bomb and thrown them through the window at the police. And fortunately it didn't have a shrapnel component, there was only the shockwave, no one else actually hurt, but a hell of a shock. And he followed that with about another, with another 10 – there was 11 bombs in total thrown by Azhari, at the police.  

He used everything he could to try and induce the police to come in so he could kill more people...  

He had been previously shot, there was blood trails and marks where he'd been, you know, writhing around on the floor where he was injured and he couldn't activate his vest. 

And his instructions to Arman – as best as we can ascertain anyway, given that no one was inside that house – was for him to put on the vest and activate a delayed detonation time, and open the door and then run at the police. And knowing that he was going to get shot, but he might get close enough to then detonate himself and then kill as many of the ‘cockroaches’, as they call them, as he could.  

But unfortunately for Azhari and Arman and quite fortunate for all of us, he actually flicked the wrong switch and detonated himself instantaneously, which definitely killed Azhari - Azhari was alive at the time of that bomb I’m sure, because of the markings of the blood in the house prior to him being blown up.  

Joe Frost

Dr Azhari Husin, one of the two most wanted men in Indonesia, had been put out of commission.  

It was big news. 

Quinton Temby has spent his career researching politics in Southeast Asia. And in November of 2005, he just happened to be studying in East Java. 

Naturally, he visited the house where Azhari had met his end. 

Quinton Temby

It was very unremarkable. It was a quiet, secluded, mountain kind of - not quite a villa, but a sort of a small house in the hills above the east Javanese city of Malang, where I was studying at the time, which is a is a hill-town resort. So it's where Indonesians go for the cooler weather and there's fruit orchards in the area and swimming pools and recreational resorts and that kind of thing. And so that's the area.   

...  it looks as though that's where he might have planned the second Bali bombing from, tucked away in a sort of a windy street, winding through the hills there.   

And yeah, I remember going past and seeing the remnants of the siege of that – the police operation there – and seeing some of the damage to the building and so on, and the cordoned off area.   

But I remember also at the time there was definitely an effort to cordon off knowledge of the presence of terrorists there from the public. And so it wasn't widely known – it was widely reported in the Indonesian media, but there was also an effort, as I think there always has been, to sort of shield the public from any details of what might have happened. 

Joe Frost

While the house had been torn apart by 11 bombs, police found more than 30 other explosive devices, similar in construction to those used on October 1. Azhari and Noordin, it seems, had further plans. 

Also found among the debris was a laptop. 

It was a treasure trove of information, including the Bali Project, the planning document referenced in a previous episode. 

There was also video footage of the three suicide bombers filmed in the days before they committed their final acts. 

Misno – the first bomber on Jimbaran – asked his family to ensure his worldly debts would be repaid. He believed his act of violence and murder would guarantee him eternal paradise but only if he was all square financially with the people he had borrowed some cash from.  

Aip Hidayat, who attacked Raja’s cafe in Kuta, thanked his mother and spoke of how the truly rich are those who are rich in their hearts. 

Finally, Salik Firdaus, who had destroyed our table, addressed his family with a message of hope, saying,  

"My brother and wife, God willing, when you see this recording I'll already be in heaven. 

“Don’t even think that people who kill in the name of God ever die. They are living.” 

It took a few weeks, but eventually, the restaurants on Jimbaran Beach reopened.  

Life goes on. 

But as he worked side-by-side with his colleagues in the Indonesian police, many of whom were Muslim, David recognised that one of the most powerful stands this international force could take was, in fact, sitting down.  

They would eat dinner together at Nyoman - the very cafe where Team Newcastle had gone for dinner on October 1. 

David Craig

So it was the first night that that had been opened. I wanted to make a statement – because the way things work with these terrorist groups, there's always sympathisers, there's always people that spot for them or are part of them – and I wanted to send a message that Australians aren't going to be bullied. And so I booked the very table that you would have been sitting at that night. And I invited the Indonesian police as well.  

It wasn't a particularly very relaxing meal, but it was – for me, as an Australian – I wanted to stick it in the face of these pricks. If anyone was watching us, to realise that we're a determined good people and we're working with the Indonesians and we're trying to track you down – and we will, we will find you. 

But it was it was a message and it was, you know, there look, there was shrapnel marks on the table and none of us really felt like eating, but we sat there and we talked and we just showed a unified front. 

Joe Frost

Gotta ask. They never brought my dinner. How's the food? 

David Craig

Oh, look, I think we might have yours in an evidence bag. I'll see if I can get it. Get it for you if you like. 

No, Nyoman is a very good restaurant.