Meet the Bereaved: Ni Luh Erniati

Ni Luh leads a support group in Indonesia for those, like her, who lost loved ones in the Bali bombings. In a two-part Dateline special, she meets two of the terrorists behind the attack.

Source: SBS

Ni Luh Erniati’s husband Gede was a barman at the Sari Club. She worked there too and it's where they met. When a bomb exploded outside in 2002, her life changed forever.

“When we got to the Sari Club, I saw them picking up the body parts of victims. Because of that, all the hope I’d had disappeared,” she says in part one of Dateline's Meet the Terrorists.

"We fell in love there. The hardest thing is that I met him in that place and I lost him in that place."

Now she leads a support group for those touched by the tragedy, with an unlikely guest at the meetings…

Nasir Abbas trained the Bali bombers, but has switched sides and now works on deradicalising people.

He tells Ni Luh Erniati and fellow widow Nyoman Rencini why he’s changed.

“Their sins weigh heavily on me. I have to set them on the right path,” he says of those jihadis still fighting for their cause.

“I have to persuade others not to do this again. I bear this burden. I feel as though I’ve sinned too.”

This is the last family photo of Ni Luh with her husband Gede and their two children. Source: SBS

The bombing left Ni Luh to bring up her two sons alone – the youngest was only 18-months-old at the time of the attack.

“People said I was too young to be a widow with two sons. They doubted that I’d be able to bring up my sons,” she calmly tells Bali bomber, Ali Imron, in the second part of Dateline’s story.

“So I’ve tried, so far successfully, to keep my children with me. That’s my story, and that’s the suffering I’ve experienced because of that incident.”

Ni Luh and her children now, looking through family photos. Source: SBS

“I think it’s important for Ali to know, for him to hear directly from me as a victim,” she says. “He needs to understand the effect it had on us.”