Police question owner of van allegedly used in Bali bombing
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta/Denpasar
Police revealed on Wednesday that one of the two men arrested in East Java on Tuesday turned out to be the owner of the Mitsubishi van that exploded with deadly force outside a Bali nightclub last month, killing at least 190 people.
Meanwhile, the police released one man arrested in Medan on Tuesday as they were unable to connect him with the bombing.
Currently, the police are focusing their investigation on three people, one in Jakarta and two in East Java, including the owner of the van.
"As of now, the investigation and questioning are still underway. I can't say what their status is at the moment. We don't know to what extent they had a hand in the bombing, but we are focusing our investigation on them," joint inquiry team spokesman Brig. Gen. Edward Aritonang told reporters in Denpasar on Wednesday.
Aritonang, however, refused to disclose the identities of the three.
Separately, East Java Police chief Insp. Gen. Heru Susanto told Antara on Wednesday that one of the two men arrested in East Java by the joint task force was the last owner of the van.
The man, identified only as Amz, 30, was arrested in Paciran village in Lamongan regency, Heru said.
He noted that the man did not resemble any of the men depicted in the police sketches of three Indonesians wanted in connection with the blasts.
"At the moment, he is being questioned somewhere in East Java," Heru revealed.
Antara said that Amz was actually a car dealer who had just received the van from a man identified as Her in Tuban, East Java.
The joint inquiry team has said that a white Mitsubishi L300 van, with a powerful explosive device located in its mid-section, stopped before the massive blast for a few minutes directly in front of the Sari Club.
The van stopped in a drop-off area not normally used for parking.
Aritonang, meanwhile, said that the police had not named any suspects in relation to the bombings.
He added that the police still needed to find more evidence to support claims that the three people now being questioned belonged to the group of six to ten people suspected of being assigned to perpetrate the bombings in Bali's tourist hub of Kuta on Oct. 12.
The police, according to Aritonang, had taken statements from more than 80 people and questioned more than 200 people, and were now focusing their investigations on ten persons.
"We are now focusing on ten people spread over various areas in Java. They could be anywhere between Jakarta and East Java," he said.
In addition, Aritonang said, the police were producing other sketches of the possible perpetrators of the Bali bombings, but were not going to make these sketches public anytime soon.
"We are making more than three sketches and they are of possible suspects, but it is too early for us to release them to the public," he remarked, while adding that all the sketches showed typical Indonesian features.
Meanwhile, the disaster victim identification team had as of Wednesday identified two more bodies, bringing the total number of identified bodies to 120. The two bodies were one Australian male and one British male. Meanwhile, the number of bodies that had been claimed by relatives totaled 92.