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.