Suicide terrorist on general Buddhist view

What is the general Buddhist view on how a suicide terrorist, like the 9/11 terrorists who killed themselves while murdering innocent people, will likely be reborn?
In other words, in which of the 6 'realms', i.e. animal, human, etc., will such a person likely be reborn and why this one and not one of the others?

Answer:

by: Venerable Nicolas Thanissaro

In Buddhism it is not thought of as a good thing to be reborn even if one is reborn in heaven - the Buddhist aim being to transcend rebirth altogether and enter Nirvana permanently. Everyone who fails to rid themselves of the mental defilements of greed, hatred and delusion will continue to be reborn again and again until they do. Buddhism teaches that any person (even if they don't believe in Buddhism) who kills other people is still puppet to the hatred in their mind - because hatred clouds their mind, when they die they will have the hell realms as their afterlife destination.

Similarly any person who kills themselves (i.e. suicide) is puppet to the hatred in their mind (this time hatred against themselves and the value of their own life) - when they die they will have the hell realms as their afterlife destination. Therefore suicide bombers have a double helping of the karmic retribution that will have them reborn in the hell realms. Only after many lifetimes in the hell realms, when the retribution starts to run down, will those beings have the chance to make their way back to the human realm, at which time they will be reborn as those who have short lives, dying repeatedly by the hand of others.

By Buddhist cosmology, those who behave in such a way will end up in the first of the eight levels of the major hells because they broke the first precept of killing living beings (themselves and their victims) and this karmic act is particularly potent because it would have been the last thing on their mind before they died.