Jakarta blasts: timeline of Islamist attacks in Indonesia

Yahoo – AFP, January 14, 2016

Indonesian police take position and aim their weapons as they pursue suspects
 outside a cafe after a series of blasts hit the Indonesia capital Jakarta on
January 14, 2016 (AFP Photo/Bay Ismoyo)

The blasts and gunfire that rocked Jakarta on Thursday came after six years of relative calm, following a government crackdown that weakened the country's most dangerous homegrown Islamic networks.

Chief among them was Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), a radical Islamist movement that carried out the bloody 2002 Bali bombings and whose key figures are now mostly dead or jailed.

In recent years however, authorities have also arrested militants linked to the Islamic State group, leading to fears that Indonesians returning from Middle East battlefields could stage attacks on home soil.

Here is a timeline of recent events around Islamic militancy in the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation:

- December, 2000: Improvised bombs disguised as Christmas gifts delivered to churches and clergymen kill 19 people and injure scores more across Indonesia.

- October, 2002: Bombs at crowded nightspots in the resort island of Bali kill 202 people, mostly foreign tourists, in Indonesia's worst ever terror attack.

- September, 2004: A suicide car bomb kills 10 outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta.

- May, 2005: Twin bomb blasts kill 22 in a market in the Central Sulawesi town of Tentena in an attack bearing the hallmarks of JI.

- October, 2005: Three suicide bombers detonate explosives at tourist spots on Bali, killing 20.

- November, 2008: Imam Samudra, Amrozi bin Nurhasyim and Ali Ghufron are executed for helping plan the 2002 Bali bombings and channelling funds for the attack.

- July, 2009: Seven people are killed, six of them foreigners, and more than 40 injured when suicide bombers target the luxury Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott hotels in Jakarta.

- August and September, 2009: Police kill Noordin Mohammed Top, a Malaysian suspected of orchestrating the Bali bombings, during a Java raid. Three of his associates are also killed as police uncover an alleged plot to use a truck bomb to assassinate President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

- June, 2011: Abu Bakar Bashir, a spiritual leader of militant Islam in Indonesia and a key figure in Jemaah Islamiyah, is jailed for 15 years for funding a terrorist group.

- June, 2013: Badri Hartono, leader of a group called Al-Qaeda Indonesia, is jailed for 10 years for recruiting people to militant training camps.

- December, 2014: Police arrest six people they say were attempting to fly to Syria to join the Islamic State group. In total, an estimated 514 Indonesians were estimated to have gone to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside Islamic State militants.

- November and December, 2015: Indonesia increases security at airports following a threat directed at one of the airports serving Jakarta. Police foil terror plots being planned by several groups, including a plan to launch a suicide attack on New Year. Experts say two of the groups were linked to IS.

Jakarta blasts: timeline of Islamist attacks in Indonesia https://t.co/gDKb8ACb5v pic.twitter.com/2jdUNQ0NIU

— AFP news agency (@AFP) January 14, 2016