AUSTRALIA has reacted with outrage to television and newspaper pictures of a selfconfessed Bali bomber smiling and joking with Indonesia’s chief of police.

Alexander Downer, the Foreign Minister, said: “I think these people are so bloodthirsty. Their sort of ugly, sneering, amused attitude at the slaughter of innocent people — it’s just horrific that there are people like that.”

The suspect, a motorcycle mechanic named Amrozi, admitted that he bought the explosives and van used in the October 12 bombing, which killed more than 190. As many as 90 dead were Australians.

Amrozi, 40, was taken before General Da’ai Bachtiar, head of Indonesia’s police force, in a glass-walled office in Bali on Wednesday, and interviewed in front of a group of grinning officers, with the media looking on.

Amrozi laughed and joked with General Bachtiar. He said that he was “very happy” that the bomb exploded. He pointed to Western journalists and said that they were the kind of people he was trying to kill.

Indonesia has subsequently sought to limit the damage from the images.

“We have very special tactics and strategy in questioning Amrozi,” Major General Budi Setiawan, the Bali police commander, said.

Mick Keelty, the Australian Federal Police Commissioner, described the event as a circus, but said: “The most important thingis that those responsible are being pursued.”

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