Source of embassy bomb funding same as Marriott: Police
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta/Bandung/Klaten/Makassar
The money used for the deadly blast at the Australian Embassy was likely part of a US$50,000 fund, which also paid for the expenses used in the attack at the JW Marriott Hotel last year, a police general close to the investigation said on Monday.
"Apparently, there was a sufficient amount of money still left from the funds used to finance the Marriott bombing," he told The Jakarta Post without elaborating further.
The general said the money transferred to the perpetrators of the Sept. 9 embassy blast that killed at least 10 people, including one suspected suicide bomber, came from outside the country via unidentified members of the al Qaedah-linked regional terrorist network Jamaah Islamiyah (JI).
Usman Gunawan alias Gun Gun, the younger brother of alleged JI leader Riduan Isamuddin, alias Hambali, confessed to police that he transferred the US$50,000, along with telecommunications equipment to his brother last year before both were arrested.
Hambali has been in U.S. custody at an undisclosed location following his capture in Thailand in August 2003.
The JI has been blamed for a string of terrorist attacks in Indonesia, including the Bali bombings on Oct. 12, 2002 and the Marriott attack in Jakarta on Aug. 5, 2003.
Gun Gun and several other Indonesian students, including Mohammad Syaifudin, Ilham Sofyandi, David Pintarto, Furqon Abdullah, Muhammad Anwar As-Shadaqqi, were arrested in Karachi, Pakistan, last September for their alleged roles in terrorist activities.
The suspects were subsequently handed over to the Indonesian authorities and several of them are still on trial for helping finance terrorism.
Meanwhile, the police general also confirmed that one of the fugitive terror suspects, identified only as Heri, whose picture was released on Saturday, was the same person identified as Rois, who is also suspected for having a role in the Marriott bombing.
Heri was the last owner of the van used in the embassy blast, police have said.
Speculations grew on Monday that Heri was himself the possible suicide bomber after police said the DNA tests showed that body parts found at the site did not match the DNA taken from family members of Hasan and Jabir, two men who were previously suspected of being the suicide bombers.
The National Police began on Monday distributing millions of posters with pictures of Azahari bin Husin and Noordin Muhammad Top as well as other terror suspects across Indonesia, including all provinces on the island of Java as well as South Sulawesi, to seek public help to capture them.
The police have put a Rp 1 billion (US$111,000) reward over the heads of Azahari and Noordin for information leading to their arrest. The two are Malaysian nationals operating with JI in this country.
The posters carried various possible versions of what the two alleged bomb masterminds could look like now, along with statistics about their features and body types.
Other posters have the images of the seven other suspects identified as Hasan, Abu Dujana, Dul Matin, Rois, Dzulkarnaen, Zuhroni, alias Oni or Nuaim, as well as Umar, alias Patek or Zacky.
The police are offering a reward of Rp 500 million for the information leading to the arrest of one of them.
In Bandung, West Java, dozens of police detectives combed the village of Citepus in Cicendo district, where Azahari and Noordin were rumored to be hiding out.
Police disseminated thousands of pictures of Azahari, Noordin and the eight other suspects at polling stations across Klaten in Central Java and Makassar in South Sulawesi.