Wednesday, December 5, 2007

The gentle face of madness


This man is a mass murderer. He was the leader of a group responsible for the killing of 202 people, mostly foreigners, in Bali, Indonesia, in 2002.

Here, with tenderness in his face, he talks with his daughter. The girl will grow up without a father. He has been sentenced to death and has chosen not to appeal for his life. Craziness is a territory with boundaries far beyond the appreciation of us more normal souls. In this picture, that territory includes the prison in which he meets her.

His name? We know it, but what difference does it make? To remember it is to remember the name of evil. Even he understood this. He generally went under aliases. Maybe he'll be unrecognized also by his god.

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