Police make new arrest in Bali blast probe
Police make new arrest in Bali blast probe
The Jakarta Post, Denpasar
Police have made a new arrest in connection with the Oct. 1 Bali
bombing incident as they struggle to obtain solid information
about the identity of the suicide bombers that could lead them to
the masterminds.
National Police deputy spokesman Brig. Gen. Soenarko said that
a 27-year-old man with the initials CR was apprehended late on
Monday in the North Sulawesi town of Takengon.
"He was apprehended last evening, and until this afternoon he
was still being interrogated intensively by the North Sulawesi
provincial police," he was quoted as saying on Tuesday by Antara.
He explained that the investigation team, in cooperation with
the North Sulawesi Police, had looked for CR after receiving tips
from witnesses in the terror attacks, carried out almost
simultaneously at three cafes on the popular resort island that
killed 23 people including the three bombers.
Soenarko, however, added that police could not yet determine
whether CR was involved in the attacks as investigations were
still underway.
He said that CR was an activist at an Islamic boarding school
in East Java. When captured by the police, he was holding a
number of different identity cards with different addresses,
including for Bogor (West Java), Gorontalo (Gorontalo province),
Jember (East Java), and Denpasar.
He said that the perpetrators of the first bomb attacks on
Bali in Oct. 2002 also had a number of different identity cards.
The police last week made two arrests, but later released them
as they had no connection with the bombers or the incident.
Police have been under intense pressure to speed up the
investigation into the bombings as it has now been two months
since the attacks and they are largely still in the dark about
the identity of both the suicide bombers and the masterminds.
Some officials have blamed Malaysian bomb expert Dr. Azahari and
Noordin M. Top for the attacks.
But National Police Chief Gen. Sutanto shrugged off the
criticism, claiming that police had made progress in the
investigation of the case, but said that he could not publicly
disclose the nature of this progress.
He was speaking to the press after a meeting with Muslim
clerics in Tangerang, Banten, calling on them to assist police in
preventing and curbing terror.
He said that police had been doing a good job in trying to
resolve the case, pointing out that just three hours after the
attacks they could come to the conclusion that it was carried out
by suicide bombers.
Sutanto declined to respond to a question from the press as to
whether Azahari was still hiding inside the country or had fled
overseas.
Police on Monday began distributing tens of thousands of
photographs showing the reconstructed faces of the three suicide
bombers in a bid to reveal their identity.