Samudra moved to Jakarta for probe into earlier blasts

Muhammad Nafik, The Jakarta Post, Denpasar, Bali

Suspect in the Bali bombings Imam Samudra was transferred on Monday to the National Police headquarters for another round of questioning over his involvement in several earlier bomb attacks in the country.

Spokesman for the joint team investigating the bombing Brig. Gen. Edward Aritonang said Samudra had been taken to Jakarta just after daybreak.

Under tight security, a convoy of armored police vehicles took one of the country's most wanted men, who has claimed responsibility for the death of at least 190 people on Oct. 12, to Jakarta from the Banten town of Cilegon, where Samudra had been detained since his arrest on Thursday.

Also transferred to Jakarta were Samudra's three accomplices -- Wahyudi, Rauf and Amin, who were arrested before his capture.

"The interrogation at the National Police headquarters will concentrate on his (Samudra's) involvement in several (bombing) cases in Jakarta, Bandung and Batam in Riau," Aritonang told a teleconference with reporters in the Bali capital of Denpasar, the home base of the investigation team.

Chief of the team Insp. Gen. I Made Mangku Pastika is currently also in Jakarta to take charge of the investigation into Samudra's role in the past bombings.

Aritonang said on Friday Samudra would be flown to Bali, where he would be confronted by another detained suspect, Amrozi.

Lawyer Ahmed Michdan, from the Muslim Lawyers Team, and Samudra's younger brother Djamaluddin later saw Samudra briefly but were not allowed to speak directly to him.

Separately, West Java Police arrested on Monday another man, identified as Agus, allegedly linked to Samudra, Pastika said. Three guns were also seized during the arrest.

Agus was taken to Jakarta but it remained unclear whether he had played a role in the Bali bombing.

Police investigators also said they were struggling to verify the confession of Samudra that the bomb attack on Paddy's Cafe was a suicide bombing perpetrated by one of his accomplices, Iqbal.

Samudra told National Police chief Gen. Bachtiar during his face-to-face meeting on Friday that Iqbal had carried a bag containing the bomb and later detonated it at Paddy's. He died in the cafe.

It exploded less than one minute before another bomb, the huge one, devastated neighboring Sari Club at around 11:30 p.m. on Oct. 12, 2002, the police have said.

"We don't know yet whether it is true that Iqbal was a suicide bomber. It is still under investigation," Aritonang said.

He said, however, that the forensic evidence at the blast site appeared to suggest that the bomb at Paddy's had not been placed on the floor but at a height 118 centimeters above it.

"It could have been placed on a shelf or locker, or attached to somebody's back," he added.

Aritonang said the police were investigating Samudra's claim about the suicide bombing by checking evidence from the blast site and from Iqbal's family, for DNA testing.

"We have taken samples of blood from Iqbal's parents in Malimping, Serang (Banten province) for DNA testing at the University of Indonesia or the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB).

"We will cross-check the outcome with unidentified body parts at Sanglah hospital, Bali. If there is nothing there identical with the DNA, we can conclude that (Igbal's body) was already destroyed or there was no suicide bombing," he said.

If so, we could then regard it as merely Samudra's trick to avoid providing information on the whereabouts of Iqbal and his detailed description, Aritonang added.

He said the investigators had also found traces of a cloth at the bomb site, which was suspected of being from the bag containing the bomb, believed to have been carried by Iqbal.

The cloth was clinging to the body of a bomb victim still at Sanglah hospital, he added. "We have taken the cloth to Jakarta for further investigation," he said.

The police continued hunting down five more suspects, including suspected bomb-makers Dulmatin, Umar and Wayan, who are still at large.

Aritonang said the hunt was focused on locations with which the police believed the suspects had had links, including Islamic boarding schools.