Perth mother of two Bali bombing victims says she can’t believe terrorist Umar Patek is about to be free

A Perth mother whose twin daughters were killed in the Bali bombings says the impending release of one of the key players in the terrorist atrocity has plunged her back into the horror of that day.

It was announced on Thursday that the man who built the bomb that killed 202 people, Umar Patek, was set to walk free from an Indonesian prison within days.

June Corteen’s 41-year-old daughters Jane and Jenny were among the 88 Australians who died when Paddy’s Pub in Kuta was obliterated on October 12, 2002.

And she said the news about Patek was particularly upsetting coming as it does on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the attack.

“It takes you right back to the moment when I went to Bali and saw the awful mess with the buildings all wrecked and my daughters hadn’t even been found at that point,” said Mrs Corteen, who flew to the island a fortnight after the blasts to try and find her girls.

“It brought a tear to my eye and I can’t see how they could believe that he won’t do it again . . . a leopard can’t change its spots. I’m just so disappointed that they’re going to let him out and if I saw him, I wouldn’t go anywhere near him.

“He’s got to live with his conscience.”

Patek, dubbed the “demolition man” because of his expertise with explosives, is set to soon walk free from Porong Prison after serving around half of the 20-year sentence handed to him for his key role in the bombings.

He evaded capture for years, prompting a $1 million reward to be issued for his arrest. He was eventually discovered in 2011 in the city of Abottabad in Pakistan — the same place where al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden was found and killed by US special forces just a few months later.

News of Patek’s release comes after Abu Bakar Bashir, the radical Indonesian cleric and spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, the terror group behind the Bali bombings, was released last year. He was jailed in 2005 for his role in the attack.

The Indonesian government traditionally reduces the sentences of thousands of criminals on the anniversary of its independence from Dutch rule. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he was making diplomatic representations to Indonesia over Patek’s early release.

But Mrs Corteen doubted any approaches would change the minds of the Indonesian authorities.

She said she had visited Bali a dozen times since the bombings and felt for the many locals seriously injured in the blasts, who could not afford proper medical care. She last visited on her 70th birthday.

Mrs Corteen also said she often thought back to Jane’s young children, Jack and Katie, leaning over the caskets of their mother and aunt and waving goodbye at the funeral.

She said she thinks of her daughters every day, with their picture taking pride of place on the wall of her Safety bay home.

“When I read the news in the paper (about Patek), I sent a message to a girlfriend of mine that I was going to spend the whole day in the garden because that’s where the girls loved my plants and vegetables,” Mrs Corteen said.

“It’s still brings a bit of heartache because Jane didn’t get to see her children grow up and Jenny didn’t get to see how well her florist shop was going. Jane was a good mother and Jenny would have been a great one, too.

“I look their picture every day and if I’ve had a really hard time, I will talk to it. They were so much alike, one couldn’t move without the other one, and you just remember the teasing and laughing.

“As I said, even to the Prime Minister, you’ve got to take it one day at a time.”