Women caught with suspicious chemical

Women caught with suspicious chemical

Rusman and Fadli, The Jakarta Post, Samarinda/Batam

Police in the East Kalimantan town of Nunukan have detained two
women and seized three tons of explosive substances, an officer
said on Monday.

Separately, a bomb hoax forced thousands of office employees
in Batam, Riau province, to flee in panic.

Nunukan police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Ince A. Rivai said the
arrest of the two women began when port officials in the regency
which abuts Malaysia inspected 62 sacks of ammonium nitrate, a
chemical substance used chiefly as fertilizer, but now seems to
be the substance of choice for would-be terrorists interested in
making home-made bombs. The ammonium nitrate was being conveyed
by the two women aboard a boat from nearby Tawao in Malaysia.

It is believed that the substance was one of the ingredients
used to make the bombs that were detonated in the Bali bombings
two years ago and many others.

The two women, Kate Basse, 44 and Hasnawati, 25, claimed they
were from South Sulawesi, and initially told Nunukan customs
officials that they intended to use it for fertilizer.

Each sack contains 50 kilograms of ammonium nitrate.

But, the customs officials suspected something, because the
amount was far beyond normal. Another big clue for the astute
customs officers was that the women did not have any documents
from Malaysian authorities pertaining to the possession or export
of the ammonium nitrate.

The officials then reported the two women to the police, who
later took them into police custody.

Ince said that after a preliminary investigation, the two
women admitted that they bought the chemicals from a trader in
Tawao, Malaysia. But, they asserted that only 47 of the 62 sacks
were going to be used by them.

"They refused to name the people who they were supposed to
give the remaining sacks to," said Ince on Monday, adding that
the police were still looking into the case and that the women
had so far only been charged with smuggling.

Separately in Batam, some 2,000 employees at the Batam
Authority's main offices became hysterical as they evacuated
their workplace after a person contacted the office at 10 a.m and
stated that there was a bomb planted on the fifth floor of the
building.

The police bomb squad was called in and they combed the fifth
floor for two hours, but they found nothing. It was the fifth
reported bomb hoax received by the telephone operator in the
building since 2001. When it happened, the chairman of Batam
Authority, Ismeth Abdullah was not in the building.

Batam police were still looking into the case.