'The bastards have done it': Australia's response to Jakarta embassy bombing revealed
Newly released cabinet documents shed light on the government's response to the deadly bombing attack on Australia's embassy in Indonesia in September 2004.
Brigadier Ken Brownrigg was sitting in his office in Australia's embassy in Jakarta when a massive shock wave ripped through the building.
“The bastards have done it,” Brownrigg, Australia’s defence attache to Indonesia at the time, said immediately.
For someone who had seen conflict in East Timor, there was no mistaking what had happened. A one-tonne bomb, driven to within metres of the Australia embassy, had just been detonated by a suicide bomber.
Al-Qaeda-linked terror group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) had targeted partygoers in Bali and hotel guests in Jakarta in the years leading up to the embassy attack on 9 September 2004.
