Bali case reveals police's limitations

Bali case reveals police's limitations

Berni K. Moestafa, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Bali bombing investigation not only uncovered the long denied
presence of local terrorists, but also the problems facing the
police in such cases even as they made progress in arresting the
bomb suspects, said a former police advisor to the police in the
case.

Analyst Hermawan Sulistyo was in Bali when the bombs exploded
at two crowded nightclubs on Oct. 12 last year, killing more than
190 people, mainly foreign tourists.

"I didn't just witness the investigation, I was part of it,"
he said after a presentation of the case in an internal meeting
at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) on Tuesday.

Himself a LIPI analyst, Hermawan said he was asked by the Bali
Police to assist them in the investigation. He had just finalized
a police research project to evaluate the work performance of the
Bali Police and was already acquainted with the local senior
officers, he explained.

"The police were not ready to deal with anything like this
(the Bali bombing)," he told the meeting as he recalled the first
few hours after the two bombs exploded several minutes past 11
p.m.

He said that poor data management was one constraint that
should not have existed. For example, he said, some of the data
he used for the slide presentation was not kept by the police
because of poor management.

But much of the problems arose from the lack of equipment the
police had. When the investigating team set up its command post
at one of the hotels close to the bomb site, Hermawan said he
noticed the police were not familiar with computer networking.

Even the computers were a problem at the beginning: "What they
had at that time were Pentium I computers full of viruses," he
said.

A Rp 50 million (about US$5,600) donation from a state company
solved that problem, Hermawan said, but added that the absence of
funds slowed the police work during the first few days.

"Imagine that there was this police officer who couldn't get
anywhere because he ran out of money to buy gasoline for his
motorcycle," he gave as an example.

The money was spent within a short time, he said, and Jakarta
eventually transferred Rp 100 million.

Help also came from Australia, whose nationals made up most of
the list of casualties. The Australian Federal Police (AFP)
joined the Indonesian Police in the investigation, and Hermawan
said that AFP's biggest contributions was the technology they
brought to Bali.

Another difficulty early in the case was identifying the
vehicle in which the bomb in front of the Sari Club exploded,
Hermawan continued.

The bomb, which left a cater in the street, caused the most
casualties.

He said the police initially mistook a taxi and a Kijang
minivan as the car bomb. But due to its power, the bomb had blown
the vehicle literally to pieces, leaving nothing but strips of
metal and engine parts.

Experts from various car manufacturers were brought in to
examine the car pieces scattered around the bomb site and they
were able to conclude the vehicle was a white Mitsubishi L-300
van.

Through the help of a chemistry expert from the Australian
National University (ANU), whom the Australian police hired, the
police identified the vehicle's chassis number.

That discovery eventually led the police to the L-300's owner,
Amrozi, whose arrest marked the first breakthrough during the
three-week investigation.

Police quietly arrested Amrozi, telling him to contact some of
the other bombers for a meeting so that they could arrest them
all together.

But the plan ran aground when a senior officer from Jakarta
tried to claim credit for the arrest. "They (Amrozi's friends)
got away because a one-star general called up and said 'wait for
me'," Hermawan said without mentioning a name. The general
arrived with a camera crew hoping to lead the police in the
Lamongan, East Java, raid.

Still through Amrozi's interrogation, the police were able to
identify another 25 bomb suspects, 17 of whom have already been
detained.

Hermawan added that much of the investigation was led by the
Indonesian Police with little assistance from the Australians,
aside from their technology.

He added that the two sides also rarely exchanged data and
mainly conducted their own investigations instead of working
together.

"It's due to public pressure to get quick results and also
sheer luck that we have gotten this far," Hermawan said.