Police search for elusive bomb makers

Police search for elusive bomb makers

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Despite four days of intensive investigation, Palu police said on
Saturday they still had no idea of the whereabouts of two people,
who apparently were smuggling and distributing huge quantities of
ammonium nitrate throughout Indonesia, a chemical compound that
can be used in bombmaking.

"We are still hoping to track them down," Chief of Palu police
precinct Adj. Sr. Comr. Norman Siswandi said, quoted by Antara
news agency as saying in Palu, the capital of Central Sulawesi.

Norman speculated that the two people, identified only as
Basir and Ilham, had fled to Makassar, after a report suggested
that they distributed perhaps several hundred kilograms of
ammonium nitrate to the city.

Norman said that the Palu police detectives were now
coordinating with fellow policemen from Makassar to hunt down the
two suspects.

The two suspects, Basir, 35, and Ilham, 34, apparently had
smuggled 600 kilograms of the chemicals in 24 gunny sacks into
the country and were preparing to send it elsewhere in Indonesia
while storing it at their boarding house on Jl. Domba in East
Palu.

Police detectives raided the house on Tuesday after a tipoff
from local residents who said two suspicious outsiders were
storing a lot of chemicals in their neighborhood, but the two
suspects had already fled, when the police arrived. The police
found only what remained of the ammonium nitrate in the house.

Bombmaking has been on the increase in the country for people
who use explosions to create chaos in conflict areas and to
create terror for political or religious causes. The police have
been trying to tighten surveillance on the possible manufacture
and trafficking of certain materials.

In a separate development, the police have released Marlin,
the landlord of the boarding house, and Febian, another resident
of the boarding house in Palu where the wanted men stayed with
their potentially deadly stash.

The two were released after questioning when it was determined
that they had no connection to Basir, Ilham or the chemicals.

Meanwhile, according to Marlin, the two suspects had told him
that they obtained the ammonium nitrate from Malaysia, via a
small port in Balaesang district in Donggala regency, some 150
kilometers north of Palu.

They also told the unsuspecting landlord that the ammonium
nitrate would be sent to Makassar "for farming purposes". It was
to have been the second such shipment, as the first was
apparently done several months ago.

He did not mention how much of the ammonium nitrate was sent
to Makassar, nor apparently did he realize people with certain
machinations could create a bomb with the material. "I did not
know that it was an ingredient for a bomb. Basir told me that
those sacks only contained fertilizer," he said.

Marlin also told the police that he knew nothing about what
Basir was doing in Palu. "I only knew that he often went out of
town," he said.