Imam Samudra's lawyers convinced 'something fell from sky'
I Wayan Juniartha, The Jakarta Post, Denpasar, Bali
A lawyer representing Imam Samudra, who is being detained by police for his alleged role in planning the Oct. 12 Legian bombings, has expressed skepticism over their client's ability to assemble the explosives, saying the police should have the suspect re-enact his role in the events leading up to the powerful bombing.
The lawyer also alleged that Imam Samudra and the other suspects had been manipulated by a "third party", which wanted to force the nation to accept its own political agenda regarding the existence of terrorist networks and the discrediting of Islam in Indonesia.
"Our concern particularly lies in the fact that the suspects have confessed to acquiring materials and assembling the explosives. But these are materials that would be used for a conventional bomb while media reports and experts have described the bomb that exploded in front of the Sari Club in Kuta as a high-tech device of great power," Achmad Mihdan of the Muslim Lawyers' Team (TPM) told The Jakarta Post here on Tuesday.
According to Achmad, the only way to reassure himself and his colleagues, the public and law enforcers themselves would be for the police to have the suspect re-enact his role in the bombing.
Imam Samudra, whose real name is Abdul Azis, has admitted to planning the bombing of Paddy's and the Sari Club in Kuta, as well as assembling the bombs.
"We remain skeptical that the explosives our client claimed he assembled could have produced a blast as powerful as one resulting from a bomb made from RDX, for example," Mihdan said.
Mihdan, accompanied by four other TPM lawyers -- Qadhar Faisal, Made Rachman Marasabessy, Nasrun Kalianda and Andi Windu -- was speaking after their arrival here on Tuesday. The lawyers also paid a visit on Insp. Gen. I Made Mangku Pastika, who heads the police team investigating the Bali blasts.
"There is also a possibility that the bomb in Kuta was made of two separate types of explosives, conventional and hi-tech ones. The suspects are supposed to take responsibility for the conventional one while the hi-tech was, somehow, implanted by those who manipulated our clients. And our clients might know nothing about this manipulation. The police should also take this possibility into consideration," he said.
"There is an eyewitness who saw something fall from the sky right before the explosion," he added.
When asked about the alleged manipulation, Pastika simply asked: "Do you think it makes any sense?"
He said all the investigators were expected to return to Denpasar on Tuesday to start preparing the draft case files in consultation with state prosecutors.
"We will stage a reconstruction of the events before prosecutors and experts," he said without elaborating.
He said the lawyers should know better than to tell the police how to do their jobs.
Inquiry team spokesman Brig. Gen. Edward Aritonang said that the police would warmly welcome any additional information or versions of events, but would continue to carry out the investigation professionally.
"But we need to verify the information or whatever versions of events are suggested first by forensic and scientific crime investigation. Without concrete evidence, we cannot incorporate such information into our investigation," he said.
However, the police still have many questions to be answered to avoid the possibility of the case against Samudra being thrown out of court.
So far, they have yet to obtain strong physical evidence either from the suspects or the blast sites, and have still to determine which of the suspects should be charged with causing the blasts in Paddy's, the Sari Club and Renon respectively. They also have yet to arrest five other suspects, including Dulmatin who, according to Amrozi's confession, was responsible for detonating the bombs in Paddy's and the Sari Club.