BACKGROUND: 2002 Bali bombings

Feb 13, 2012, 4:20 GMT

Jakarta - Islamist militants bombed two nightclubs on Indonesia's resort island of Bali on October 12, 2002, killing 202 people, mostly foreign tourists.

The first blast was set off by a suicide bomber in Paddy's Pub in Kuta. Seconds later a huge explosion from a bomb-laden Mitsubishi van ripped through the Sari Club, just across from Paddy's.

Eighty-eight Australians and 38 Indonesians were among the dead.

A third, much smaller bomb exploded outside the US consulate, but claimed no casualties.

Jemaah Islamiyah, a South-East Asian militant group at the time linked to al-Qaeda, was blamed for the bombings.

Police arrested the first suspect, Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, less than a month after the bombings. This was followed by the arrests of other key players including Ali Ghufran, Ali Imron and Imam Samudra.

Amrozi, Ghufran, also known as Mukhlas, and Samudra were sentenced to death in 2003. Imron received a life sentence after expressing remorse and has since cooperated with police in a programme to rehabilitate former militants.

The three on death row were executed on November 9, 2008.

The alleged Jemaah Islamiyah spiritual leader and founder, Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, was arrested in 2004 after treason charges in an earlier trial in 2003 failed to stick.

Ba'asyir was sentenced in March 2005 to two and a half years in prison for conspiracy over the Bali bombings but the Supreme Court later cleared him.

He was re-arrested in 2010 and sentenced to 15 years in prison for his involvement in a militant training camp in Aceh province.