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.