Airport, House bombing suspects arrested
Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
As police intensify their investigation into the JW Marriott Hotel bombing, they released on Thursday a photograph of a face allegedly involved in the bombing and arrested two suspects related to previous bombings at the House of Representatives compound and the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.
The developments coincided with the Bali bombings trial in Denpasar in which suspect Amrozi was sentenced to death.
National Police chief of detectives Insp. Gen. Erwin Mappaseng told the press that the head might belong to the sole unidentified fatality in the bombing, which killed 10 people and injured 149 others.
"Our (key) witness observed a man behind the steering wheel inside the van," he said, referring to a 1986 metallic blue Toyota Kijang van packed with explosives and fuel that exploded in the hotel's driveway.
Police have yet to reveal the identity of the head, which had been blown up to the hotel's fifth floor, but dubbed it as "Mr. X".
The severed head, which was reconstructed with the help of forensic technology, has identifiable features including a scar on the right side of the forehead, a 2.5 centimeter black beard and a mole on the right side of the neck.
Erwin said police would conduct a DNA test to try to identify him, including by trying to match the head with various body parts found around the epicenter of the blast.
Police had said earlier that they found similarities between the Marriott bombing and both the Bali bombings on Oct. 12, 2002 and the bombing at the residence of the Philippine ambassador Leonides T. Caday on Aug. 1, 2000, in terms of materials.
They believe that UN-listed terrorist network Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) is behind the bombings.
Police had also released three sketches of a man, who bought the van that blew up in the blast at the Marriott. The man, estimated to be in his 30s, is believed to be from Lampung.
When asked about a hotel security camera that captured the moments before the explosion, Erwin only said that there was nothing on the film but the effect of the blast.
The progress in the investigation was announced on the very same day the Denpasar District Court handed down the death sentence to Amrozi, one of Bali bombings suspects. A total of 202 people were killed in Bali while more than 300 others were injured.
The two suspects, allegedly involved in two previous bombings near the UN office and the airport, were nabbed separately on Wednesday evening in East Bekasi. They were identified as Adityawarman, 23, who was arrested at a rented house on Jl. Pahlawan, Duren Jaya, and Fadli, 25, who was captured in a rented house in Perumnas III, East Bekasi.
The police team, led by Jakarta Police chief of detectives for national security Adj. Sr. Comr. Tito Karnavian, also seized three bombs from the rented houses. Two bombs were ready to be activated while another one still needed to be wired up.
Police said that the materials, including the metal cylinder, used in the bombings near the United Nations office and the airport, both in April, were similar to the bomb that exploded at the legislative complex on July 14.
They claimed earlier that they had been made a composite sketch of a man who had ordered two metal pipes in a shop in Taman Sari, West Jakarta.
Witness Mulyadi said that Adityawarman had rented the house on July 22 from neighborhood unit chief Muhamad Thalim, who is Mulyadi's father.
Adityawarman had told the people in the neighborhood that he came from Surakarta, Central Java, and worked in Cibinong.
During the media briefing, Erwin also refuted a statement from Brig. Gen. Gories Mere as quoted earlier by ABC radio that police had prior information about the bombing.
"About the bugging, it's not true," said Erwin, referring to the report that claimed police had traced e-mails from a man identified as Asmal.
Gories told the ABC that police had detected six weeks before the Marriott carnage an e-mail using a code "to get married", a code used by JI members to refer to the desire to take part in a suicide bombing, in Asmal's inbox.
Police had arrested nine suspected JI members in Central Java and Semarang. During the arrest, they also confiscated over 1,000 detonators, 30 bags of potassium chlorate weighing 30 kilograms each, four boxes of TNT, 65 PETN detonators (a high-explosive substance), 11 shoulder-launched rockets, more than 20,000 rounds of ammunition, two M-16s, timers, batteries, maps and documents.
A key suspect later committed suicide during police questioning. He was believed to be the one that had twice transported explosives from Semarang to Jakarta.