Police hot on trail of Bali blast masterminds

The Jakarta Post, Denpasar/Jakarta

Police said on Tuesday that they had made significant progress in the investigation of the weekend blasts in Bali, with forensic experts and investigators recovering bomb fragments that might yield clues about who masterminded the deadly suicide bomb attacks.

National Police deputy spokesman Brig. Gen. Soenarko Danu Artanto said the police found pellets, cables, detonators and nine-volt batteries at the blast scene.

The recovered bomb materials, particularly the nine-volt batteries, were typical materials used by Malaysian bombmaker Azahari Husin and his followers in previous bomb attacks.

Azahari and Noordin M. Top have evaded capture despite being linked with a series of bombings including the 2002 Bali bombs, the 2003 attack on the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta and the 2004 blast at the Australian Embassy.

Soenarko, however, could not confirm whether the latest blast was the work of Azahari, saying that the police still needed to carry out further investigations into the recovered materials.

He said that aside from the bomb materials investigators also found shreds of a black bag, scraps of jeans and two wallets - all believed to belong to the three suicide bombers, who killed at least 19 people in nearly simultaneous bomb attacks at three places in Bali on Saturday evening.

Sidney Jones, an expert on Indonesian Islamist terrorist groups, was quoted by AP as saying that the types of explosives used in the Bali bombing attacks should be compared with materials used in other attacks, since such analysis could yield vital clues about which groups were involved.

Bali Police Chief Maj. Gen. I Made Mangku Pastika also said on Tuesday that it was too early to directly blame Azahari and Noordin -- or Jemaah Islamiyah.

"We still do not know that," he told reporters, adding that the investigators' first priority was identifying the three bombers.

The two-star police general said that two people were being interrogated as part of investigations into the blasts, but so far there was no indication that they were involved.

Soenarko said that the police have also questioned 39 witnesses from the three bomb sites.

Meanwhile, Denpasar resident I Gusti Ngurah Rade Suardana said that some 40 police officers had raided the Kreneng neighborhood in search of a couple believed to have some connection with the bombers. He added that the detectives were also looking for a Toyota Kijang and a Suzuki Karimun used by the accomplices in the attacks.

Elsewhere, Pastika said that the police might interrogate the convicted bombers behind the 2002 Bali blasts, including three on death row, in a bid to identify the masterminds behind the latest attacks.

A convicted 2002 Bali bomber, Ali Imron, said from his Jakarta jail cell that he did not recognize the three, but that he believed the blasts were the work of Azahari.

Imron told the Indo Pos newspaper that judging from the press reports the perpetrators were "those same people". When asked who he was referring to, he said: "Who else if not the group of Dr. Azahari."

Meanwhile, National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Aryanto Boedihardjo said that detectives would investigate a man who says that he knew one of the Bali bomb suspects.

"There was a man who called a TV station saying that he was once connected to the man shown on TV and now we're following up on that report," Aryanto said.

He refused to name the man or the TV station, and did not identify which bomb suspect that the man claimed to know.