‘My mistake’: Convicted Bali bomb mastermind Umar Patek speaks in prison video ahead of release

Bomb builder Umar Patek has appeared in a video filmed inside prison as he awaits news on his parole after serving half of a 20-year sentence for his role in the 2002 deadly terror attacks.

Convicted Bali bomb mastermind Umar Patek has appeared in a video filmed inside the Indonesian prison where he has served half of a 20-year sentence for his role in the 2002 terror attacks.

The video was made with Porong Prison governor Jalu Yuswa Panjang, in the prison grounds in East Java, and released on the prison’s YouTube channel.

The 20-minute video shows the men walking through the grounds and laughing together as they talk.

Patek, who has controversially been granted parole, talks about his role in the bombings, which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.

Umar Patek arrives at Bali Police Headquarters in Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia, in 2011.

He was the bombmaker for the al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiah, and was jailed in 2012 after being located in Pakistan in 2011 and extradited to Indonesia for trial.

“My mistake was to be involved with the Bali bombing,” the ABC reported he says in the video.

“I told them I was against it. But they were 95 per cent done with the project. Nine-hundred-and-fifty kilograms of explosives were packed and ready, and they insisted on going ahead with it.”

Patek also revealed he didn’t originally go to Bali to join the terror attacks, but had gone there to introduce his Filipina wife to his family in Java.

“I didn’t come to Indonesia to join the Bali bomb project” he reportedly says in the video.

“Even when I found out about it I was so against it, I disagreed with it.”

Patek claims to have been deradicalised during his prison time, and wants to work with young convicted terrorists when he is released. That release will depend on final approval from the Jakarta government.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has previously said the government would continue to raise concerns with the Indonesian government about the imminent release.

He said he had nothing but “contempt and disgust” for the bomb maker who assembled explosives used in the Bali terrorist attacks, and that Patek’s early release would add to the trauma of the families of the 88 Australians who lost their lives in the terrorist attack ahead of the event’s 20th anniversary on October 12.