Bali bombing suspects to reconstruct crime
I Wayan Juniartha and Tiarma Siboro, The Jakarta Post, Denpasar/Jakarta
The police will fly suspects of the Bali blast from the resort island to Central Java to have them reconstruct the meetings they allegedly held to plan the attacks.
The spokesman for the joint investigative team, Brig. Gen. Edward Aritonang, said here on Friday that the reconstruction was aimed at convincing the police about the suspects' planning of the attack and with whom they made the plans.
"We want to make sure as to whether the suspects actually held meetings to plan the attack, who attended the meetings and who launched the attack according to the plans," he said, adding that the suspects may be flown to Surakarta, Central Java, aboard a charter flight.
He added further that after the reconstruction in Surakarta, the suspects would be taken to Lamongan, East Java, to reconstruct the amassing of chemicals confiscated from the homes of Amrozi's business partner, who was arrested in Malaysia.
Qadhar Faisal, a lawyer for the suspects, said the charter aircraft was to depart Saturday morning at 7:00 a.m. for the Central Java town.
Among the seven suspects to be flown out are Imam Samudra, controller of the attack, Amrozi and his older brother Mukhlas alias Ali Gufron. The police have yet to determine which one of the suspects are to be held responsible for each of the blasts at Paddy's Cafe, the Sari Club and Renon.
Samudra, whose real name is Abdul Azis, has confessed to being the controller of the attack. He was arrested in Merak, Banten, on his way to Pekanbaru, Riau, on Nov. 21, and the police have examined his notebook computer seized from a house he had rented in Serang. Samudra has also said the blasts were detonated by Dulmatin, who is still at large.
Amrozi, another key suspect in the blasts, admitted to having purchased chemicals for the explosives in Surabaya and then transporting them to Denpasar. He was arrested in his home town in Lamongan, East Java, in November. Samudra and Amrozi knew one another.
Mukhlas was arrested along with other members of the Solo Group on Dec. 5 in Klaten, near Surakarta. The operations chief of Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) in Southeast Asia confessed to handing over a sum of US$30,000, which he had received from Malaysian Man Win, to Samudra to finance the attack.
In Jakarta, Chief investigator Insp. Gen. I Made Mangku Pastika said on Friday that the reconstructions were needed to find out more about the individual roles of the suspects in the blasts at Paddy's Cafe and the Sari Club in Kuta.
Almost simultaneously, another bomb also exploded near the office of the honorary U.S. consul in the suburb of Renon in Denpasar.
"The reconstruction will be held sometime within the next week in three cities, including Lamongan and Solo in Central Java, as well as in Bali," Pastika said.
Pastika, nevertheless, refused to disclose whether Imam Samudra and Amrozi were among those key suspects that would take part in the reconstructions.
The police has also disclosed the contents of the so-called Solo Documents, which detailed terrorist activities as well as their extensive organization with a clear chain of command among members, including the delegation of tasks in the field during a terrorist operation.
Based on the documents, Samudra acts as the commander, while underneath him is an additional member tasked with chemical substance provisions. It is believed that Amrozi held this position.
"Even though the documents referred to JI, we (the police) have yet to figure out whether Ba'asyir was connected to the Bali bombing," Pastika said, referring to Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, chairman of the Yogyakarta-based Indonesian Mujahidin Council (MMI), and also the co-founder of JI.
Police have said that the Bali blasts that killed almost 200 people, mostly Australian, and injured more than 320 others, were part of a vast terrorist operation spanning the last three years.
Several suspects, including Samudra, have admitted to their involvement in the blasts at the Atrium Plaza, Jakarta, in 2000, and at several churches in Batam and Pekanbaru on Christmas Eve 2001.