Police await lawyers before tackling Samudra and his four accomplices
The Jakarta Post, Denpasar/Jakarta
Police are waiting for defense lawyers to arrive before interrogating Abdul Aziz alias Imam Samudra, the alleged mastermind of the deadly Bali bombings, and his four accomplices.
"We will continue the interrogations after their lawyers arrive in Bali, probably on Monday," chief investigator Insp. Gen. I Made Mangku Pastika, the man leading the joint investigation, said on Saturday.
He said that the suspects had to be accompanied by lawyers during questioning, but stressed that in line with the new antiterrorism regulation they would not be allowed to hear their clients' answers to questions posed by police during the interrogations.
"They will only be able to see their clients but not to hear them," Pastika said.
Lawyers for another leading suspect, Amrozi, who has been undergoing questioning in Bali since last month, were only allowed to watch their client being questioned and were refused permission to interrupt during the interrogation sessions.
Samudra and his four co-accused -- Amin alias Junaedi, Wahyudi alias Andri Oktavia, Abdul Rauf, and Agus alias Andi Hidayat -- were flown on a Fokker F-28 plane to Bali from Jakarta under heavy guard late on Friday.
All are being held separately to prevent them from having any contact with each other.
Samudra and Amrozi are being detained in the Military Police post inside the Bali Police Headquarters, which also hosts Rauf and Amin. Meanwhile, Wahyudi and Agus are being held at Denpasar Police Headquarters.
Ahead of their arrival, the detention cells earmarked for them in the Bali Police Headquarters were fitted with a video surveillance system.
Several mini cameras, implanted high on the ceilings, continuously feed pictures in real-time mode to various monitors in the guardroom, intelligence offices, and the offices of a number of high-ranking police officers.
Pastika said the alleged operations chief of the regional terror network Jamaah Islamiyah (JI), Mukhlas, and eight other suspects -- also implicated in the Bali bombings -- would also be flown to the resort island from Klaten, Central Java, where they were arrested last Tuesday night.
Pastika, speaking after the arrival of Samudra in Bali, claimed that the bomb probe had netted at least half of the bomb- plotters.
He said "at least 90 percent" of the plot had been uncovered since the Oct. 12 attacks that killed more than 190 people, mostly foreigners, despite the fact that the police were unable to identify the sources of the high explosives, such as RDX, used for the bomb in Bali.
Bomb experts say finding the sources of these high-powered explosives will be crucial to identifying other suspects outside Samudra and his accomplices' group.
Pastika said the arrest of Amrozi on Nov. 5 was the most important breakthrough in the investigation. "Before his arrest, everything was dark but after we captured Amrozi then we began to see some light," he was quoted by AFP as saying.
He described Samudra as "a subordinate" of Amrozi's brother, Mukhlas, in JI, but added that Samudra had "more advanced bomb- making skills" than Mukhlas.
Samudra, 35, was arrested on Nov. 21 at the Merak ferry port in Banten province while trying to flee to Sumatra before heading overseas.
On Friday, Pastika said Samudra would be taken to the scene of the blast for a reconstruction of the crime should this prove necessary.
He also disclosed that the devastating bombings, which caused millions of dollars in losses, cost just US$30,000 to finance, adding that Mukhlas had admitted accepting the cash in two installments from a Malaysian called Wan Min.
Pastika said the money was "all spent and gone" and Wan Min was now being detained in Malaysia. Police are still investigating who gave the money to the Malaysian.
Meanwhile, Malaysia's Taufik bin Abdullah alias Dani, who is appealing against a death sentence over his role in the Atrium Plaza bombing in Central Jakarta 2001, admitted he knew Samudra and the alleged JI leader, Abu Bakar Ba'asyir.
Ba'asyir is being detained by the National Police in Jakarta for his alleged role in various bombings, but has yet to be linked to the Bali blast.
"He (Ba'asyir) is a good man. a good teacher. But I don't know him well," Dani said on Friday at Jakarta's Salemba prison.
Dani's Indonesian accomplice, Abbas, was also sentenced to death over the Atrium Plaza blast, in which Samudra also played a role. The bomb was intended to target Christians holding a religious gathering at the Aston Hotel adjacent to the plaza, Abbas said.