Jakarta, Sept 10: The sister of Imam Samudra, the Islamic militant sentenced to death today for masterminding the Bali bombings, said she was praying for a miracle to save her brother. Nunung told Elshinta radio her family rejected the ruling passed by a court in Bali because it was "engineered by humans and it was not a punishment from god."

"The hope from our family is for him to be set free. Hopefully there will be a miracle from god almighty," she said. Samudra's lawyers say he has told them to appeal because he should have been tried under Islamic law.

If Samudra's appeal is rejected in future, Nunung said she hoped her brother would "die for a holy cause as a Mujaheed (jihad warrior)."

"Perhaps it (death) is the best thing for my brother, Abdul Aziz," she said from the family home in a village near Serang, a town in west Java. Aziz is Samudra's birth name.

The hardline Indonesian Mujahideen Council, which campaigns for Islamic law in Indonesia, described the death sentence as "totally disproportional and inappropriate."

Council spokesman Fauzan al-Anshori said he believed Samudra was innocent of the Bali attack and in general was only "avenging acts of tyranny" by the United States and its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The death sentence should instead be given to the king of terrorists himself, George W Bush, and to his cohorts, Ariel Sharon, Tony Blair and John Howard," al-Anshori told a news agency. Bureau Report