Bali bombers executed by firing squad

JAKARTA, Nov. 8 (UPI) -- Three Islamist terrorists were executed early Sunday in Indonesia for their part in the bombing of a Bali nightclub, the attorney general announced.

A spokesman said the bodies of Imam Samudra, 38, and two brothers, Amrozi Nurhasyim, 47, and Ali Ghufron, 48, would be returned to their home villages later in the day, the Antara news agency reported. They were put to death by firing squad just after midnight on the Nusakambangan prison island.

The 2002 bombing killed 202 people, many of them Australian tourists.

While Indonesia is 85 percent Muslim and has the world's largest Muslim population, most Indonesians supported the death sentences, the BBC reported. But the group behind the 2002 bombing and other acts of terrorism has a hard core of support, and many of those men were gathering in the villages where the three bombers would be buried.

The three never expressed remorse for the deaths they caused and said they wanted to be martyred. They had asked to be beheaded, a request that was denied.