Police fail to connect al-Qaeda with Bali bombers
Police fail to connect al-Qaeda with Bali bombers
The Jakarta Post, Singapore/Denpasar
National Police chief Gen. Da'i Bachtiar said on Wednesday that
investigators were unable to establish a link between Osama bin
Laden's al-Qaeda network and Muslim militants blamed for the
deadly Bali bombings last October.
The police are detaining 15 of the 26 suspects in the Oct. 12
blasts that killed more than 190 people and injured some 300
others.
The investigators have linked many of the suspects with the
regional Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) terror organization, allegedly
connected to al-Qaeda, which was blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001
attacks on the United States.
But Da'i told a seminar in Singapore that it was difficult to
link the Bali bombing suspects with bin Laden's terror network.
"We haven't come to any conclusion yet that there is a link
between Jamaah Islamiyah and al-Qaeda. That will depend on the
cooperation we have with law enforcement in Malaysia, the
Philippines and Singapore," he told Reuters.
The comment contradicted statements from Minister of Defense
Matori Abdul Djalil who said that there was such a link, and
suggested that differences remained in the Indonesian government
over its campaign against terrorism.
Two days after the Bali blasts, the Australian government said
it had information linking al-Qaeda to the explosions, which
killed about 90 Australians.
Da'i said Indonesia was still investigating the Bali attacks
with law enforcement authorities in Southeast Asia and with
cooperation from the United States, Australia and Europe.
Scores of suspected members of Jamaah Islamiyah have been
jailed in Singapore and Malaysia.
The U.S. and the United Nations have included Jamaah
Islamiyah on a list of terrorist organizations.
Furthermore, Da'i called the Bali bombings a blessing in
disguise because the attacks allowed his country to prove it is
serious about tackling terrorism.
"There are many blessings that we got from the Bali bombings.
We got a lot of advantages from that," he told AP while
addressing the same conference aimed at wooing Singaporean
investors to Indonesia.
"The Bali bombing struck Indonesia hard, but it was also a
blessing in disguise. It has changed the world's negative view of
Indonesia," he added.
Meanwhile, deputy chief investigator Brig. Gen. Edy Danuardi
said on Wednesday that the Bali inquiry team had obtained further
"important information" to develop the investigations after
opening the laptop belonging to Abdul Azis, better known as Imam
Samudra, the alleged mastermind of the Bali carnage.
The laptop, which was opened last Saturday night by two
Australian and Indonesian computer experts, contained e-mail
correspondence between Samudra and his foreign accomplices before
the Bali bombings, Edy said.
He declined to give more details.
"The investigators are identifying files that have connections
with the Bali bomb attacks, which files can be investigated in
relation to Imam Samudra's network overseas and others that can
be traced further," Edy told journalists in the Bali capital of
Denpasar.
He said the new data would be used to complete evidence to be
included in Samudra's case file, which is expected to be
presented to prosecutors later this month.
However, the coordinator of lawyers for the bombing suspects,
Qhadar Faisal Ruskandar, said Samudra denied that all the files
in the laptop were his.
About 75 percent of the files are "genuine", while the rest
were inserted by others, Qhadar said.
Qhadar and his colleague, Made Rahman Marassabesy, skipped the
preliminary court hearing of Masykur Abdul Kadir, one of the 15
detained suspects, which went ahead on Wednesday.
The two lawyers refused to attend the pre-trial after they
were twice attacked by people present at the hearing despite
being tightly guarded by police.
The attacks have prompted the lawyers to urge the authorities
to move the venue of the bombing trial off of Bali for security
concerns.