THREE of the Bali bombers whose attack on a nightclub last October killed 202 people have boasted of the crime, dismissing their victims — including 26 from Britain — as sinners.

“The Sari club was a place of adultery,” said Ali Imron, the bomb-maker, in an interview with The Sunday Times last week. “In short, it was a place of sin so it deserved to be demolished.”

The club was chosen because the bombers thought it would be full of Americans, they said. In the event, seven Americans died while 89 victims were Australian. “Australians, Americans, whatever — they are all white people,” Ali said.

The remarks shocked relatives of the British dead.

Ray Gajardo, from Truro, Cornwall, said his son Marc, and others, had gone to the Sari “to have a laugh and enjoy themselves with people from all over the world”.

Tobias Ellwood, a City lawyer whose brother Jon died, said: “What strikes me is the ignorance of these killers about the type of people who were going to be their victims.”

The three bombers — Ali, 38, his brother Amrozi, 40, who bought the explosives and the van, and Imam Samudra, 34, who masterminded the logistics — all expect to be executed by firing squad.

Ali and Imam were trained in Afghanistan and admitted to being admirers of Osama Bin Laden. They said they had attended his speeches but denied that he had anything to do with the Bali attack.

The two plan to raise money for their families by writing autobiographies which they hope will become bestsellers among militant Muslims.

All three men gave detailed accounts in unauthorised interviews at a detention centre in Bali where they pass their days praying, reading and writing in a hot, bare, windowless cell. None expressed any remorse or sympathy for the dead.

A series of trials begins tomorrow, when Amrozi will answer a charge of conspiracy to commit terrorist acts leading to mass murder. He said that he would admit everything.

“I was given money to buy explosives and a second-hand vehicle to transfer the materials to Bali around August last year,” he said. “I bought the explosives at the chemical shop where I go for fertiliser.”

He said he looked forward to the trial. “I predict it’s going to be a death sentence,” he said. “Look, this is jihad and because I am doing it Allah will look after my children and my wives much better than me.”

Ali said he was trained to handle explosives by Islamic mujaheddin on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in 1993. His group was taught how to blow up railways and buildings and how to plant landmines.

Asked if he had ever met Bin Laden, Ali said: “Personally? Of course not. He is not an ordinary person, even in Afghanistan. But sometimes I went to listen to his speeches. The idea of this bombing did not come from him.”

Ali said he had completed a book called A Defence of the Bali Bombing. “My lawyer will arrange the printing and marketing. I asked him to distribute the income equally for my family, for Islamic teachings and for the poor.”

Imam Samudra, the third occupant of the cell, spends much of his time reading the Koran and other holy texts. “There is a lot of immorality in Bali,” he said. “It is a place where drug dealers, local and international, do their transactions. Why did we pick the Sari club? Because no Indonesian or Malay was allowed to enter the place.”

In fact, 38 Indonesians died.

Imam, who is married with four children, said that he was inspired to attack “infidels” by hearing of discrimination against Muslims in the Palestinian territories, Afghanistan and Iraq. He read Arabic- language books about jihad while studying in Malaysia and later went to Afghanistan for guerrilla training. “I went to Osama Bin Laden’s sermons sometimes but I wasn’t inspired to do jihad by him or his teachings,” he said.

The plans of Imam and Ali to publish books and spread their views alarmed Andrea Shearman of Pinner, north London, whose daughter Emma Fox was killed by the bomb.

“It leaves me cold and speechless,” she said. “I don’t buy the idea that Bin Laden had nothing to do with this. It’s obvious they’ve been influenced by his teachings.”

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