Police sample blood to identity bombers

Police sample blood to identity bombers

The Jakarta Post, Denpasar, Jakarta

Police said on Thursday they had taken blood samples from several
people in East Java province believed to be related to the three
suicide bombers who were responsible for the bomb blasts in Bali
last weekend.

However, National Police spokesman Brig. Gen. Soenarko Danu
Artanto declined to name the people in question.

Grisly photos of the three bombers' severed heads, which were
recovered from the blast sites, have been circulated nationwide
in the mass media to try to identify them, while the police are
widening their search outside Bali for suspects who helped carry
out the attack.

Soenarko said the police were zeroing in on five men in Banten
province to help find the bombing suspects.

But, there was no connection found between the five men and
Saturday explosions in Raja's Restaurant and Bar in Kuta Square,
Kafe Menega and Kafe Nyoman in Jimbaran.

"We are pursuing them because of their links with past cases,"
Soenarko said without elaborating.

He could not say whether the five men, identified only by
their initials as PT, IN, ED, BN and GW, were linked to the 2002
Bali blasts in Legian which killed 202 people, mostly foreign
tourists.

Soenarko said police investigators had questioned a total of
95 witnesses in connection with the recent attack.

Another National Police spokesman Maj. Gen. Ariyanto Budiharjo
said the suicide bombers had not worked alone but must have
received orders from others. "Someone must have made the
explosives," he said.

Separately, Bali Police chief Maj. Gen. I Made Mangku Pastika
said the three suicide bombers were part of "a new generation" of
terrorists.

"Yes, it is a new generation that has been just trained," he
was quoted by AFP as saying of the suicide bombers.

Pastika, who led the successful hunt for the bombers convicted
of the blasts three years ago, said identification of the
attackers was still the main priority but that other lines of
inquiry were also being pursued.

"We are now still unclear as to what kind of bombs they were,
how they were detonated and whether they were detonated by the
perpetrator himself or by others by remote control," he said.

Police investigators across the country were interrogating
jailed terror convicts in the hope that they could identify the
bombers, said Pastika.

However, the questioning of the 2002 Bali bombers, including
those on death row, yielded "no valuable input", he added.

The police completed the collection of evidence for forensic
analysis at the three bombing sites on Thursday and reopened the
sites to the public.

Soenarko said the forensic teams discovered 37 materials
related to the explosives used to bomb Kafe Menega, 28 at Kafe
Nyoman and 16 others at Raja's Restaurant and Bar.

These explosive devices and equipment were assumed to belong
to the suicide bombers, he added.

Soenarko said the police received a lot of information from
people about the identities of the suspects but were still unable
to find any leads.

In Jakarta, another police spokesman Sr. Comr. Bambang Kuncoko
denied that one of the suspected bombers was a former student of
the Ngruki Islamic boarding school led by jailed cleric Abu Bakar
Ba'asyir.

"Based on our investigation, so far we have not found any
connection between them and Ngruki," Bambang said on Thursday.

He also said that nor was there any relation between the 15
suspected terrorists captured in Central Java several months ago.

"We will just see where the investigation leads to," Bambang
said.

Meanwhile, seafood restaurants along Jimbaran Bay had been
warned they could be targeted following the discovery of a
partially made bomb weeks ago, but decided to delay plans to
bolster security, an official said on Thursday.

Capt. D. Dharmada said cafes along the bay had been told to
station guards and to check bags and cars entering the crowded
and chaotic area, but decided to wait until after the Hindu
holiday of Galungan that was celebrated on Wednesday -- four days
after the bombings.

"If those measures had been implemented, this attack probably
would not have happened," AP quoted Dharmada, who is in charge of
security in the area, as saying.