Police nab 2 suspects in Poso bomb blast
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta, Makassar
Less than a week after a deadly bomb blew up inside a public transportation minivan in the troubled Central Sulawesi regency of Poso, police arrested two men on Friday for their alleged role in the attack.
Central Sulawesi Police chief Brig. Gen. Aryanto Sutadi said the police were still hunting another person suspected of involvement in the latest violence to rock the town since a peace agreement put an end to two years of sectarian disturbances in December 2001.
Aryanto, himself a former antiterrorist officer, said the two men offered no resistance when the police apprehended them at their homes in Gerbangrejo subdistrict, Poso Kota district.
"Their initials are N, aged 26, and K, aged 24. Another suspect, I, was not at home when we searched his place," Aryanto said as quoted by Antara.
He added that the third suspect was believed to still be in the town.
A bomb exploded in the minivan near Pasar Sentral market on Saturday last week, killing six people and injuring a number of others. The blast came less than two weeks after a minibus driver was shot dead and a Christian village chief was beheaded.
Aryanto said the arrests were made after investigators examined the blast site and quizzed several witnesses in the area, who led the police to a number of suspects.
"We made the arrests after getting descriptions of the perpetrators and matching these with our files on suspected persons. We are now interrogating the suspects," he said.
However, Aryanto refused to disclose the role played by each suspect or the motive behind the bombing, saying there were currently "many interests" in the area.
One of these, he said, concerned the election of the Poso regent, which had sparked tension in the area.
"All of the victims of the bombing were ordinary people and they had nothing to do with any criminal cases. These terrorists don't care who the victims are. They were trying to provoke their opponents to act," said Aryanto.
National Police chief Gen. Da'i Bachtiar said after visiting Poso a few days ago that the perpetrators of the bombing would be charged under the antiterrorism law and could face the death penalty.
Vice President Jusuf Kalla, who brokered the 2001 peace deal, rejected the possibility that the blast was related to the sectarian conflict that he had helped end.
"There is no longer any sectarian conflict in Poso. What happened were acts of terror perpetrated by one or two people or groups of people," Kalla said on the sidelines of post-fasting get-together at his private residence in Makassar on Friday.
He acknowledged, however, that some people who had been involved in the bloody conflict would stop at nothing to get revenge.
Kalla also reacted strongly to the National Commission on Human Rights' finding that violence in the area was continuing because of the absence of effective law enforcement there.
"How can they conclude that law enforcement is not working while the police are still hunting down the terrorists? It's true that there are still many weapons in the hands of the rival parties in the conflict a few years ago. But, it must be remembered that finding these firearms is difficult as the police cannot control all of this vast territory," Kalla said.
The rights body delegates visited Poso for a fact-finding mission following a string of violent incidents that have shaken the town over the past three weeks despite the presence of over 2,000 reinforcement police and military personnel.