Few clues to perpetrators one month after bombings
Few clues to perpetrators one month after bombings
Slobodan Lekic, Associated Press, Jakarta
Police concede they have made little progress in their investigation into the Bali bombings one month ago, but terrorism experts say it is only a matter of time before there is a breakthrough.
Bali Police chief Insp. Gen. Made Mangku Pastika said on Monday that identifying the three men who carried out the Oct. 1 suicide strikes that killed 23 people, including the bombers, and wounded more than 100 others remained a top priority for his detectives.
But while pictures of the bombers' severed heads have been circulated nationwide, followed by a US$10,000 reward for information about their identities, "so far nobody has come forward," he said.
This has stymied investigators, leading to speculation that the three may have been foreigners, possibly from Malaysia or Muslim areas of the southern Philippines.
Police say identifying the men who bombed the three crowded restaurants could lead them to the masterminds, suspected by some to be Azahari bin Husin and Noordin Moh. Top, alleged to be key figures in the regional terror group Jamaah Islamiyah (JI).
Though there has been little progress in the probe so far, terrorism analysts note that investigators were not much quicker in identifying the perpetrators of four earlier bombings attributed to JI, a shadowy network of extremist groups with cells in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the southern Philippines.
In 2000, bombs exploded at 11 churches across Indonesia on Christmas Eve, killing 19 people. Two years later, 202 people perished in two coordinated blasts in Bali's Kuta district, and in 2003 a car bomb killed 12 people at Jakarta's JW Marriott Hotel. Last year, a minivan blew up in front of the Australian Embassy in downtown Jakarta, killing 11.
Police have arrested hundreds of suspects in those cases and several dozen others have been tried and convicted, including five who received death sentences.
The wave of arrests, made with the help of investigators from Australia and the United States, has greatly reduced JI's organizational capabilities, said Ken Conboy, a Jakarta security consultant and author of "The Second Front," a newly published book on the terror group.
"The government's crackdown against JI effectively removed the top two tiers of that organization," he said, adding that the latest Bali attacks -- in which suicide bombers strolled into cafes carrying small bombs in their backpacks -- were relatively unsophisticated compared to the massive car bombs used in previous attacks.
In some ways the group is more elusive now, because the remaining cells are virtually autonomous, operating with little or no contact with each other or their leadership, he said.
"Unfortunately, until the security forces succeed in capturing JI's remaining leaders, the organization remains dangerous," Conboy said.
Sidney Jones, another expert on Islamic terrorist groups, agreed.
"The investigation may be stalled for the moment, but I don't think it'll be stalled forever," she said. "The walk-in bombers have shown themselves to be a much more difficult investigation than one involving a car bomb," which can be traced by chassis or engine numbers, she added.
Experts say another problem hampering the investigation may be the relatively low level of concern by the political establishment regarding militant Islam, which is not seen as threatening Indonesia's social order or territorial integrity.
While the threat of terrorist attacks remains a key issue for many Western countries, authorities here have been distracted by much bloodier and potentially more dangerous conflicts that have shaken Indonesia since the fall of Soeharto in 1998.