Police blamed for intelligence failures
Eva C. Komandjaja, The Jakarta Post
Public enemy No. 1 and bombing fugitive Azahari bin Husin had worked undetected in a building near the Australian Embassy to plan the Sept. 9 attack, a top police officer said on Wednesday.
Speaking at a round table seminar on police intelligence, National Police detective chief Comr. Gen. Suyitno Landung said that police investigations had found the Malaysian bomb expert had been working for a company in the area as part of his plot to attack the embassy.
Azahari, who was already on the police wanted list at the time, was working in the building after the Bali bombings but before the JW Marriott Hotel attack in 2003.
However, Suyitno would not reveal exactly when Azahari started work at the company. He also declined to identify the company.
Police Watch chairman Rashid Lubis blamed the police's intelligence failure on its overconfidence following its separation from the military in 2000.
"The police should have obtained this information before the Embassy bombing," Rashid said.
Their inability to capture Malaysian fugitives Azahari and Noordin Moh. Top after more than two years of hunting was partly attributable to the poor performance of the police intelligence unit, he said.
"After the separation, there has been less communication and coordination between the intelligence units in the police and the military," Rashid said.
Azahari and Noordin have been top on the list of the police's most-wanted since the Bali bombings that claimed 202 lives on Oct. 12, 2002. The search for the two Malaysian bomb-makers intensified after the JW Marriott Hotel blast in Jakarta last year.
The police were on their tail, narrowly missing them in house searches in Bandung earlier this year but investigations after the Australian Embassy blast indicated both were still active. The attack came just after the police antiterror unit had sought help from a convicted Bali bomber in their efforts to locate the pair.
The police have put up a Rp 1 billion (US$111,111) reward for information that leads to the capture of either man.
Police had earlier found that Azahari had been regularly visiting Gadjah Mada University (UGM) in Yogyakarta to give lectures in physics between 1998 and 2000.
"He was entitled to give lecture in UGM because he graduated from a top university in England, majoring in physics," Suyitno said.
Rashid suggested that the police boost cooperation with the military intelligence to trace materials used to make bombs that exploded outside the Australian Embassy.
"Basically, it is a matter of lack of coordination and cooperation between state intelligence agencies," Rashid said.
He also called on the police to improve internal communication to avoid unnecessary mistakes as happened when a police officer later realized he had mistakenly stopped and let free Azahari for traffic violations the afternoon after the morning attack.
On top of these problems, the police lacked quality human resources and technology to capture the suspects, Rashid said.
"Military intelligence received better education and operate better equipment than the police intelligence," Rashid said.