On this date — mere hours ago as of this writing — three of the most infamous terrorists in two nation’s histories were shot in a jungle clearing on Indonesia’s Nusa Kambangan Island.

“At around 00:15 am (1715 GMT Saturday) the three convicted men on death row, Amrozi, Mukhlas and Imam Samudra, were executed by firing squad,” said attorney general’s office spokesman Jasman Panjaitan.

“The autopsy results show that all three are dead. The family members are now bathing the bodies.” (Source.)

The men were taken from prison and tied to wooden crosses in the Indonesian prison island’s forest, where they were shot simultaneously by three separate firing squads for the October 12, 2002 bomb attack on the island of Bali that claimed 202 lives.

Though taking place in Indonesia, the strike was aimed at westerners vacationing at a tourist hot spot. Eighty-eight Australians were slain, along with 76 other (predominantly European) foreigners. The only shred of regret the late executees ever betrayed was that the infidel body count wasn’t higher.

The mediagenic murderers display a range from insouciant to jocular in most of their photos. The ever-grinning Amrozi — in the middle — was known as the “smiling assassin.”

The three facing death today* have occupied most of the intervening six years endeavoring to transmute their criminal celebrity into the dearer coinage of martyrdom through the doubtful influence of the Philosopher’s Stone mass media.

Despite their body count, burial disturbances, and even the prospect of some follow-up strike by at-large members of Jemaah Islamiyah, a base metal the late bombers will remain. Picture the most fanatical devotee of any cause you care to conjure drawing any enduring inspiration from this juvenile twaddle.

Indonesia has appeared to sidle towards this execution, ginger at inflaming Islamic radicals; Australia, which has no death penalty itself, has been controversially mum and bombing victims and their families conflicted.

It remains to be seen whether the high-profile case has legs among militants. But its undertones of race, religion and national sovereignty are being very closely watched by one group of Australians in particular: the Bali Nine, Australian nationals in Indonesian custody for drug smuggling.

Three of the nine are currently on death row, reportedly “somber” at this day’s shootings — no doubt aware that they could be next.

Update: True to the publicity-savvy rep, Imam Samudra reportedly knocked out a nasheed or nasyid just before his execution that’s now a hot ringtone download.

[audio:Imam_Samudra.mp3]

* A fourth man was also death-sentenced, but that sentence was vacated on appeal.

On this day..

• 1801: Hyacinth Moise, Haitian Revolution general - 2020
• 1716: Maria of Curacao, slave rebel - 2019
• 1773: Eva Faschaunerin, the last tortured in Austria - 2018
• 1641: Maren Splids, Jutland witch - 2017
• 1940: Julian Zugazagoitia, Minister of the Interior to republican Spain - 2016
• 1945: Charles Ford Silliman, suicide pact? - 2015
• 2011: Luo Yaping, "land granny" - 2014
• 1942: Eddie Leonski, the Brownout Strangler - 2013
• 1848: Robert Blum, German democrat - 2012
• 1842: Stephen Brennan, desperate bushranger - 2011
• Themed Set: Bushrangers - 2011
• 1610: Blessed George Napier - 2010
• 1944: Georges Suarez, collaborationist editor - 2009
• 1911: Charles Justice - 2007