Bali suspect's case file `still lacking'

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

With the police about to submit the case file on one of the alleged Bali bombers to prosecutors today, analysts say that while the evidence against the suspected bombers is strong, it is not sufficient to prove their links to an international terror network.

The police plan to submit the case file on Amrozi, one of the principal suspects in the deadly Bali bombing that killed over 190 people, mostly foreign tourists, and injured more than 300 others.

The police have detained 15 suspects so far for involvement in the Oct. 12 bombings. Eleven other suspects are still at large.

State prosecutors will accept the files for registration with court officials in Denpasar, Bali. It normally takes between four and six weeks for a case to come to trial after it has been listed with the court. Officials expect the trials to start in February.

Given the amount of evidence collected during the three-month investigation, analysts said on Sunday that they were certain the trials would lead to convictions.

"They (police) have confessions, material evidence, and there is a logical connection between the suspects' statements and the facts as found in the field," said Hamid Awaluddin, a legal expert from Surabaya's Airlangga University.

The breakthrough in the investigation came with the arrest of Amrozi in November last year. He owned the minivan that was used to detonate the bomb and admitted to having bought explosive materials which he took to Bali in the minivan.

Amrozi's confession led to the arrest of 14 other suspects, including Abdul Aziz alias Imam Samudra. The police believe that it was Samudra who masterminded the bombing.

The speedy progress in the resolution of the case -- the work of a joint investigative team involving local police and the Australian Federal Police (AFP) -- has drawn praise from many quarters both at home and abroad.

Lawyer Franz Winarta said the case files would be strong enough to convict the suspects. But, he added that the investigation had failed to uncover evidence showing that an international terrorist network was behind the bombings.

Government officials and terrorist experts suspect the bombing to have been the work of Jamaah Islamyiah (JI) -- a regional underground organization that reportedly has bases in Singapore and Malaysia. JI reportedly aims to create a Southeast Asian Islamic state and is said to have ties to the Al-Qaeda terrorist network.

Documents on JI were found in a number of suspects' homes but the only link to the organization is Amrozi's brother, Ali Ghufron alias Mukhlas.

He is one of the four key suspects who have been arrested, and is allegedly a senior JI operative in Indonesia.

The only other sign of an international terrorist network has been the naming of two Malaysian suspects who are still at large.

Franz said the investigation did not come close to uncovering what he suspected was "another layer" of foreign suspects behind the bombing. "There appears to be a missing link, as if it has been deliberately cut out to hide the real masterminds," he said.

And in what could undermine the prosecution case, some critics point to the police's inability to name the exact explosive materials or the type of bomb used in Bali.

Amrozi purchased some of the materials in a chemicals shop in Surabaya but investigators have yet to explain the traces of RDX they found at the bomb site. RDX is mainly used by the military.

And although Samudra is the alleged mastermind, he claimed to have used TNT and denies all knowledge of the RDX.

The absence of lawyers during the police's interrogation of the suspect may also raise questions even though this is allowed under the new antiterrorist legislation.

"In cases where the government is under pressure to demonstrate quick results, evidence is often acquired by questionable means," said criminal law expert Topo Santoso of the University of Indonesia.

He said that during the trial the bomb suspects could retract the confessions they had made earlier to the police. This would made conviction difficult as the court would then only be able to admit the statements made during the trial as evidence, he explained.