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DNA points to suicide bomber in Bali
SOLO, Indonesia -- The Australian Federal Police (AFP) say forensic evidence is pointing towards a suicide bomber being responsible for the first of two devastating blasts in Bali last month, the first such attack in Indonesia. Key suspect Iman Samudra told a joint Indonesian-Australian investigation team last week that the first of the Bali blasts, the smaller blast in Paddy's Bar in Kuta Beach, was detonated by a suicide bomber. AFP commissioner Mick Keelty told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that Samudra's claim was "consistent with the forensic examination of the bar and it's also consistent with what we're getting from the post-mortem examination of one of the bodies in the mortuary up in Bali." Investigators have linked key suspect Samudra with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network but police have yet to establish a connection with the outlawed Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) group. Indonesian police at the weekend seized military rifle ammunition and books and video disks featuring lectures and speeches by bin Laden during a series of raids in central Java of properties thought to be associated with Samudra. "While in the house rented by Imam Samudra, we found several books and two boxes of video compact disks on the lectures and speeches of Osama bin Laden," Central Java chief police detective commissioner Rus Bagyo told reporters Sunday. Samudra has allegedly confessed to being the mastermind behind the October 12 Bali blasts, which killed more than 180 people, saying the attack was to avenge injustices against Muslims around the world. Samudra has now been transferred from West Java to the Indonesian capital of Jakarta for further police questioning and he will eventually be moved to Bali where the investigation team is based. Meanwhile, Indonesia's National Police Chief General Da'i Bachtiar told media at the weekend that police had yet to reach a final conclusion as to whether Samudra and his alleged accomplices belonged to JI. "We will attempt more accurately to get information through our interrogations as to the relations between the perpetrators as well as whether or not they have links to other organizations, whatever their names, including JI," Da'i told reporters at National Police Headquarters in Jakarta. "But, he (Samudra) has admitted that those guys gathered as people with 'shared ideas and opinions' which prompted them to conduct these actions (bombings)," Da'i said. A report in The Australian newspaper Monday quotes an unnamed senior police source as saying Samudra had admitted to being a key player in JI. Involvement deniedAustralian Federal Police also consider Samudra to be a JI member and perhaps one of the top three figures in the group which is allegedly headed by Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir. Ba'asyir is being held by Indonesian police in connection with a series of Christian church bombings in late 2000 and a plot to assassinate Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri. He denies any involvement in those crimes and has blamed the Bali bombings on trouble-making by the United States. The three houses searched at the weekend were in a village three kilometers (two miles) from Ba'asyir's Ngruki Islamic boarding school near the city of Solo in Central Java. Ba'asyir was a founder of the school and was teaching there until he was arrested early this month. Samudra was arrested in west Java on Thursday while trying to board a ferry for Sumatra island. Laptop examinedA neighbor told reporters Samudra had rented the house where the bin Laden tapes were found for three months, but had left three days before the Bali bombings. Police said at another of the three houses, rented by a different man, they found assault rifle ammunition as well as one kilogram (2.2 pounds) of urea fertilizer and some other powder, which they said could be used to make bombs. Police are also examining a laptop computer found at another home also rented by Samudra. More than 100 Australian police, as well as officers from half a dozen other countries who lost citizens in the Bali attack, are involved in the bomb investigation. Seven suspects have been arrested and at least two have confessed to involvement in the attack, according to police. Some politicians and Muslim leaders have raised questions about the swift progress of the investigation in view of what they see as a patchy Indonesian police record in solving previous bombing and other cases. Reuters contributed to this report.
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