Jakarta, Indonesia – The bombs should be small and placed in daypacks, making them harder to detect. The bombers should dress like tourists. They should not bother targeting hotels, because security is too tight. Instead, they should consider restaurants, discos and theaters.
A thorough survey should be done in advance by the bombers themselves. This way, they are more familiar with the sites, and no one is left behind to be hunted later by the police.
“There is no escape plan because the perpetrators will become martyrs,” the planning document states. “They will go to the targets and not return.”
This is the minute-by-minute outline of a suicide bombing.
Indonesian police uncovered the document from the computer of one of the planners of an attack last October in Bali that killed 20 people, when three men walked into separate restaurants and blew themselves up with daypacks loaded with explosives.
The document, experts say, offers a rare glimpse into the minds of terrorist plotters and the kind of meticulous planning that lies behind even a relatively simple operation. The schedule in Bali even provided for 20 minutes for the bombers to pray.
“It tells us that these guys tried to think of every contingency,” said Sidney Jones, project director of the International Crisis Group’s office in Jakarta, and an expert on terrorism in Southeast Asia. “Even when they’re being hunted, they had the capacity to think through what had to be done right down to the second.”