Azahari Husin’s manual for the 2005 Bali bombings and the fates of those convicted of the 2002 attacks in Bali.

Earlier this week an instruction manual, “The Bali Project”, found on the computer of Azahari Husin, a Malaysian engineer educated in Australia and Britain who was a master bombmaker and one of Southeast Asia’s most dangerous terrorists before he was killed in a shootout last November in East Java, was publicized in the media, first in Tempo magazine, then in the New York Times.

The document details plans for the October 2005 suicide attacks on three restaurants in Bali in which 20 people were killed. First the manual discusses the choice of Bali for a terror attack – because Bali is a well-known tourist destination and bombings there would have a “global impact”:

Bali is known around the world, better than Indonesia itself. An attack in Bali will be covered by the international media

writes the author, presumably Azhari Husin.

The second section deals in detail with the plans for the attack. After the 2002 car-bombing of a nightclub in Kuta, in which over 200 people were killed, the plans says that now “security is tighter”, noting that the police chief in Bali had increased the number of intelligence officers to 256 from 70, and therefore “the bomb must be smaller, and brought in ready to use” so as to avoid detection.

The targets, the author writes, are “foreign tourists from America and its allies”. But it would difficult for the bombers to know if individual tourists were from America or American-allied countries – “so, we will consider all white people the enemy”.

A few weeks before the attacks, the three bombers were sent to Bali to “survey” possible targets. Prior to that, they were told to learn what they could about Bali, a popular tourist island, online, and to get tourist brochures from travel agents and a tourist map. The possible targets surveyed included famous American fast food restaurants, theatres, a golf course, tattoo parlours, art galleries and souvenir stalls.

As part of their surveillance, the men were told to “pay attention to clothes worn by local tourists” and what kind of backpacks or shoulder bags they carried and whether they carried more than one. The men did their reconnaissance and reported back.

The next section includes a question-and-answer exchange between the men and their “field commander”, presumably Azhari. The men had concluded that the bombers should not use taxis to reach their targets because a taxi driver might help with the backpacks and be suspicious of their weight.

Meanwhile those men responsible for the first attack in Bali, in 2002, will shortly face the firing squad, reports say. A firing squad has already been selected for the three men, Amrozi, Ali Gufron alias Muklas, and Imam Samudra.

The three men, and their families, have declined to seek clemency from the president, but one of their lawyers, Wirawan Adnan, said he nevertheless planned to file a final appeal known as a judicial review to the Supreme Court later this month.

The prosecutors can execute them whenever they want, but it will be against the law since the three still have the right to appeal.

He also requested that the hearing for clemency be moved away from Bali, saying that this move would respect the feelings of the Balinese.

As three men were about the meet their fates some calls were heard, not directed specifically at the Bali bombing case, for an end to the death penalty, from predictable sources. A delegation of European Union ambassadors met with Vice President Jusuf Kalla on Tuesday to ask that Indonesia abolish the death penalty.

The delegation said capital punishment was a violation of the basic right to life, according to Justice and Human Rights Minister Hamid Awaluddin. Hamid said the EU delegates expressed concerns over the death penalty and requested the Indonesian government amend its laws to abolish capital punishment.

Hamid said however that the government had no such plans to abolish the death penalty.

Vice President Jusuf Kalla told the delegates we are not going to scrap the death penalty because it is still needed, and that the number of executed prisoners since 1945 was small.

Only 71 people have been executed for criminal offenses since independence.

Hamid said that under the current laws, the death penalty was only handed down for those convicted of drug trafficking, premeditated murder and terrorism.