Police say bombing suspects still in RI, likely in 'pesantren'

The Jakarta Post, Denpasar/Jakarta/Surabaya

Police investigators hunting down the Bali bombers said on Monday that they believed the six suspects whose sketches were released on Sunday were still hiding in Indonesia.

"We believe that all these people are still in Indonesia. Maybe it's easier for them to hide in this country than overseas. But I don't have any proof yet," Insp. Gen. Made Mangku Pastika told a news conference in Denpasar, Bali.

In Jakarta, National Police chief Gen. Da'i Bachtiar said the suspects still at large may be holed up inside pesantren (Islamic boarding schools) around the country.

"Yes. This is what we believe from the various pieces of information that we have obtained," he said when asked by journalists whether the suspects, all aged in their thirties, may be hiding in pesantren.

Police have detained a 40-year-old mechanic named Amrozi, who has confessed to involvement in the Oct. 12 tragedy. On Sunday, they released sketches and detailed descriptions of the other six.

Amrozi, a junior high school graduate, has named Imam Samudra alias Kudama, Fatih or Abdul Aziz as the mastermind behind the attacks along with Idris, who is believed to have been his right- hand man.

Samudra, 35, studied at the Al-Tarbiyyah Al-Islamiyyah Luqmanul Hakiem Madrasah in the southern Malaysian state of Johor before becoming a teacher there and marrying a Malaysian woman, the Malay Mail said on Monday.

It said Idris alias Johni Hendrawan, who allegedly provided financial and logistical support for the operation, also studied at the school.

Several teachers at the school, including the principal, Shahril Hat, were detained by Malaysian police in January this year for their alleged involvement with the Malaysian Militant Group (KMM), the paper said.

The KMM has been linked to Jamaah Islamiyah (JI), which aims to set up a regional pan-Islamic state.

Pastika said Samudra had been to Afghanistan, but he did not know in which year.

Embay Badriah, who is Samudra's mother, said that her son left home in 1990 for Malaysia to find work as soon as he graduated from an Islamic high school with flying colors.

She never heard of him until he returned home in 2000 and left again a few hours later.

"He said he was going out to meet old friends but he never came home again," she told AFP, adding that her son had never written to her or telephoned her.

Embay said she believed Samudra was never involved in terrorism and questioned whether he was the same person identified by the police as Samudra.

"He was a reserved and gentle person. He didn't talk much and was very religious," she said from her home in the Banten town of Serang.

Embay, a single mother, said police had not so far come to her home to ask about her son.

In a related development, Amrozi's cousin Sumarno surrendered on Monday to East Java police, who have been seeking him for illegal possession of firearms.

The police found a cache of assorted weapons and more than 5,000 bullets in a forest near Amrozi's home village in Tenggulun, Lamongan, East Java. The links between the weapons and the Bali bombing remain unclear.

Accompanied by his lawyer, M. Yasin, Sumarno gave himself up to the Ngawi police in East Java on Monday morning. Yasin, also acting for Amrozi, said he had persuaded Sumarno to answer the accusations against him.

"He (Sumarno) came to the Ngawi police after his name was mentioned on the list of wanted persons," the lawyer said.

He said Sumarno, now being questioned as a witness, had been asked by Amrozi's brother Ali Imron to drive a van carrying the illegal firearms into the forest. However, Sumarno denied knowing that the load he was transporting consisted of weapons.