Confession of Bali bombers to be released

Confession of Bali bombers to be released

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta/Semarang/Malang/Surabaya

The police expanded their investigation into the Azahari terror network on Tuesday with an arrest in Semarang, while in Jakarta the police force is set to release to the public a video compact disc of the Bali suicide bombers making statements of intent.

The arrest in Semarang came after a tip-off that alleged Azahari operative Dwi Widyarto had befriended Munawar, a resident of Jempono, Semarang in Central Java. Munawar was apprehended at his house at dawn on Tuesday but denied any links with Dwi and Azahari, the feared Malaysian bombmaker who was killed in a police raid in Batu, East Java, last week.

During the arrest, police also confiscated an air rifle and several books on Islam subjects.

The police have arrested at least six people in Semarang: Munawar, Dwi Widyarto, Cholil alias Yahya Antony, Abdul Azis Syammakh, Mujib and Anif Solchanudin. Besides the arrests, Central Java Police have also beefed up security at malls and are making random checks on main streets in the province to look for Azahari's men.

Azahari was an important figure in Jamaah Islamiyah, a regional terror network that is pursuing a Pan-Islamic state in Southeast Asia. The master bombmaker, whose death is considered a major blow to the terrorist network, had been blamed for a number of deadly bombings in Indonesia.

The police have now intensified the search for Azahari's men.

In Surabaya, East Java Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Endro Wardoyo said the search for ammunition caches belonging to Azahari in Ponorogo and Bojonegoro regencies had been called off. The police found a cave and a bunker in Ponorogo and Bojonegoro respectively but they contained nothing. The police obtained information on caches hidden in forests from Nurkosim, who was believed to have been Azahari's fund-raiser in the past but who has been serving time in prison for a criminal offense. The information from Nurkosim led the police to the cave and bunker but proved to be false.

In Jakarta, police spokesman Insp. Gen. Aryanto Budihardjo said the police would distribute to Muslim clerics copies of the VCDs of the Bali Oct. 1 suicide bombers making statements of intent. The original recording was found during a search of Azahari's raided hideout in Batu.

The police want clerics to help raise public awareness that jihad does not entail becoming a suicide bomber.

Prominent Muslim cleric Din Syamsudin is supporting the police's move. Din, chairman of Muhammadiyah, the country's second largest Muslim organization, said at a public function here that Islam does not instruct its followers to commit suicide because "suicide is an expression of desperation, not of jihad."

In the Batu raid, the police found two other VCDs on bomb-making and military training, which will not be made public but would be examined by the police, said Aryanto.

In a separate development, the family of Suwanji, a man detained by the police in Batu, said the family was beginning to overcome the trauma of Suwanji's arrest. Suwanji was interrogated but released after police found no evidence that he was linked to the Azahari network.