Police inch closer to Azahari's inner circle
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta/Bandung/Surabaya
Police said on Friday the manhunt for the perpetrators of the Sept. 9 blast outside the Australian Embassy would soon bear fruit with the arrest of alleged accomplices of Malaysian bomb experts Azahari bin Husin and Noordin Moh. Top.
National Police chief Gen. Da'i Bachtiar said investigators had arrested more people in two locations in the western part of Java and North Jakarta, who were alleged to have helped prepare the explosives used in the bomb attack and to have harbored the Malaysian fugitives.
"They were not directly involved in the bombing. For example, they admitted they knew the packages they were moving from one place to another were explosives. They also confessed they were with Azahari right before the explosion," Da'i said.
Azahari and Noordin are believed to have masterminded the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, the JW Marriott Hotel attack in Jakarta that claimed 12 lives and last week's blast that left at least 10 people dead, including one of the perpetrators.
Entering the second week of the investigation, the police have arrested 21 people, but one of them, Agung, has been released due to lack of evidence.
A police source said the latest arrests were four people in Bandung, one in the Central Java town of Surakarta, one in Banten, four in Lampung and two in a slum area in North Jakarta.
He said that the two men detained in North Jakarta were believed to have harbored Azahari and Noordin, and to have helped the Malaysians transport the explosives used in last week's bombing.
However, he would not identify those the detained persons.
"After leaving Cengkareng, both Azahari and Noordin moved to densely populated areas such as those in North Jakarta because nobody there would be suspicious of newcomers," he said.
The source said that after multiple arrests the police were now concentrating their manhunt on West Java, including Bandung and Cirebon.
"We came to this conclusion after every place we searched outside West Java revealed nothing," he said.
Da'i warned that the bomb attacks would likely continue as the police still did not know whether the explosives detonated last week were the last that the terror suspects had.
"We don't know yet whether Azahari has made only one bomb. We can't stop the threat of bombs unless we capture Azahari and Noordin. The latter is an expert in persuading people to become suicide bombers," said Da'i.
Meanwhile, West Java Police said they had readied hundreds of officers to help the team from National Police Headquarters in hunting down Azahari, Noordin and the other suspected bombers.
West Java Police chief Insp. Gen. Edi Darnadi said he had deployed at least 20 detectives from his department and hundreds of detectives from police precincts across the province to search various areas, including Garut, Tasikmalaya, Ciamis and Banjar.
"We are still concentrating on these areas. We can't say anything yet, otherwise the suspects will get wind of what we're doing," said Edi.
The provincial police have distributed 10,000 fliers and pictures of the alleged embassy bombers across West Java.
East Java Police have also deployed additional personnel to capture Sulaiman, the teacher of Rahmatullah, who was arrested in Sidoarjo on Wednesday for his alleged links to Azahari. Sulaiman and two other men escaped police capture following the arrest of Rahmatullah.