Police hot on trail of Bali blast masterminds
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.