JAKARTA: A suspected Indonesian extremist plotted with other militants on Facebook to bomb the Myanmar embassy to avenge the killing of Rohingya Muslims in that country, a court heard Wednesday.

Separiano, 29, could face the death penalty over the plan to attack the mission in Jakarta in May, amid anger in Muslim-majority Indonesia at persecution of the Rohingya in mainly Buddhist Myanmar.

The suspect, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, was arrested the night before the planned attack as he rode a motorbike with another man allegedly involved in the plot.

Police said they found five pipe bombs in a backpack they were carrying. Several men were arrested over the plot and Separiano is the first to go on trial.

Prosecutor Susilo told the South Jakarta District Court as his trial began that Separiano was radicalized over several years after attending sermons by an extremist preacher at a central Jakarta mosque.

He also attended several sermons by firebrand cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, the alleged spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah which was the terror network behind the 2002 Bali bombings.

It was on the social networking site Facebook that the suspect, who studied bomb-making on the Internet and had bought materials to make them, met the extremists with whom he hatched the embassy attack plot, the prosecutor said.

This was where he met the alleged mastermind of the plot, Sigit Indrajid, who leads the Negara Islam Indonesia (Islamic State of Indonesia) group.