May 12, 2003
By ERIC ELLIS
DENPASAR, INDONESIA -- The tiny town of Malimping, in the remote corner of
southwestern Java, revolves around the alun-alun, a village square as big as a
football field. Symbols of the Indonesian state gather around it: a police
station, a school, a health clinic, municipal offices and the telephone
exchange. There's also a modest mosque, and Indonesia's red-and-white national
flag flutters proudly above.
In the middle of the alun-alun is a massive asem tree. Malimpingers have shaded under their illustrious tree for generations -- to pray, to plot against Dutch colonizers and Japanese occupiers, to celebrate the country's 1945 independence, to remember the ousting of Suharto in 1998. Even just to play guitar, gossip and while away the scorching equatorial days.
It was beneath this tree's weeping boughs, just 50 metres from Malimping's unsuspecting police station, that 35-year-old Imam Samudra recruited jihadis to his holy war.
"We had no clues they were there, no hint that anything suspicious was going on," said embarrassed police chief Jamalludin Chaniago. "It was an entirely normal place to be."
Malimping's alun-alun is also the birthplace of an intricate plot that would lead Mr. Samudra and his associates to Jelan Legian, the main drag of the heart of Bali's pulsating nightlife, last Oct. 12. That night, as Eminem's Without Me pounded from the speakers at Kuta's packed Sari Club, a young Indonesian man stepped from a white Mitsubishi van containing 12 filing cabinets packed with a lethal 700-kilogram recipe of potassium chlorate, sulfuric acid and aluminium powder, then blew himself and the van to pieces.
Today, in a Bali courthouse converted from an auditorium that normally features elaborate banquets and wedding parties, is the start of a series of trials for a group of men charged in the blast, which killed 202 people -- including two Canadians -- and injured 350. It was the world's worst terrorist attack since Sept 11, 2001.
First to be tried will be Amrozi, one of three brothers alleged to be militants with al-Qaeda's Southeast Asian associate, the Jemaah Islamiyah group.
Amrozi has developed near-rock-star notoriety, with his winning smile, square jaw and reputation as a Lothario in his home village. Indonesian women send love letters and offers of marriage to his Bali cell.
But police say Amrozi is a confessed killer, a crucial cog in a terror machine that drew Islamist militants from across Indonesia, Malaysia and Canada into a plot to kill "Western infidels" when they were at their most vulnerable -- blithely partying in a nightclub on a Saturday night.
Pieced together from police interviews and visits to the defendants' hometowns, this is the story of how the suspects are alleged to have come together and planned the night of horror.
Samudra journeyed by bus to Malimping from his home in Serang, five hours drive north, in mid-2000, not long after he returned to Indonesia from 10 years abroad in Pakistan, Afghanistan and, mostly, Malaysia.
His oldest sister Aliyah says that when he returned to Indonesia at Eid, the end of the Islamic haj pilgrimage, "he felt hurt and angry. He'd seen his Muslim brothers slaughtered [in Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories] and he wanted revenge for that."
Older, fluent in English and Arabic and full of worldly adventures, Samudra cut a thrilling figure for impressionable Malimping kids such as Andri Oktavia, his friend, Andi (one of Malimping's young football stars), and an acquaintance, Arnasan, who lived in his parents' shack outside town.
Over two years, Samudra introduced his new friends to computers and the Internet, teaching them how to communicate on-line. He acquainted them with cellphones, with text messaging. He explained the "victory" of Sept. 11. Samudra got to know these small-town boys with barely an education between them, winning their trust.
Andi, Andri and particularly Arnasan were Samudra's low-hanging fruit, forming the core of what would eventually be the 13-strong terror cell that police now know as the Serang Group. Members of the group have been implicated in bombings across Indonesia, notably the Christmas, 2000, attacks on Christian targets in eight cities. Bali wasn't yet marked for an attack, but the boys sensed that their guru was planning something big, something that would guarantee them eternal paradise. It was exhilarating stuff for three naive kids from a scruffy town like Malimping.
By early 2002, it was decided to bomb "soft targets" in Southeast Asia -- after a key meeting in Thailand between JI's leadership and known al-Qaeda operatives, including Mohammed Mansour Jabarah -- a Kuwaiti-born Canadian who had left his home in St. Catherines, Ont., not long before and was allegedly an envoy for Osama bin Laden.
Samudra's Bali plans took off. The Hindu island and its foreign tourists would be the target of a big hit.
The plotters decided to finance their activities by robbing non-believers. Stealing from infidels was not a crime, Samudra explained to his charges, but a noble part of the holy struggle. Last Aug. 22, Andri and Andi donned balaclavas and pistols to raid a jewellery store in downtown Serang of the equivalent of $60,000 in cash and gold. It helped that Elita's owners were Chinese, regarded by many Javanese as polluters.
A few days after the Elita grab, most of the loot was handed to Samudra in the back of a Suzuki van parked in a Jakarta bus terminal. Andri, Andi, Arnasan and another cell member, Abdul Rauf, kept some to rent two safe houses near Serang, finessing their plans and staying close to their guru Samudra.
While Samudra was plotting jihad, a family of devotees were spreading their own message in a tiny hamlet on the eastern side of Java. Foreigners don't get a friendly reception at the Al-Islam boarding school in Tenggulun, which is run by the father of the radical brothers the world now knows as Amrozi, Ali Imron and Ali Ghufron (known by his nom de guerre, Mukhlas). Visitors are welcomed by signs in English that say "Only for Muslim People."
The elementary English taught to students here is not the standard "Hello" or "How are you?" but words such as "avenger," "mole," "accuse" and "spy." At least that was the only visible lesson on the blackboard when one reporter visited, before being forced to retreat under a torrent of spittle.
Tenggulun is almost medieval. A few of its hundred-odd houses have been tarted up by remittances sent from relatives working in Malaysia, but like Arnasan's district in West Java, the poverty is palpable. There's hardly a car or a motorbike on its streets. Wizened old men, their backs bent under cut bamboo, stagger through town herding buffalo.
In Tenggulun is the house where Amrozi, Mukhlas and Ali Imron were raised. It's small and modest, more a wooden shack, its three rooms partitioned only by flimsy plywood. There's a small refrigerator, a fan and four broken rattan chairs.
Groaning in pain in the middle of the stone floor is the family's 85-year-old patriarch, Nur Hasyim. He lies on the floor in a puddle of his urine, incontinent and whimpering. His wife swats away flies crawling over him, occasionally adjusting his green sarong to cover his genitals. The stench in the house is overpowering.
In the street outside, one of his grandchildren -- a girl no more than 5 -- rides a tricycle. When the wheels turn, its tinny speaker plays London Bridge is Falling Down.
Tariyem, the 65-year-old mother, is frail herself. The house has been raided a dozen times since last Oct. 12, and she seems genuinely bewildered by the whirlwind that has followed, a tragedy that will likely see a quarter of her family executed.
"Why would my kids do such a thing? I cannot understand. They were all good kids. They never expressed any hatred for anyone," she said.
"I just have to accept that they were involved. We don't have anything. The only thing we have is religion. I hope that their struggle can be accepted by God. I just have to surrender to God."
Solo is where Indonesians connect with their inner Java. The city's famous ancient sultan's palace is stunning. So is the Majid Agung, the grand mosque built in a low-slung Javanese manner.
But it wasn't a cultural odyssey that drew Samudra's group and the brothers Amrozi, Mukhlas and Ali Imron to Solo last August. They met there to fine-tune the attack on Bali.
Samudra first contacted Amrozi in late 2000, not long after returning to Indonesia. He needed bomb ingredients for church attacks on the Moluccan island of Ambon, and Amrozi was eager to help.
For Indonesia's radical jihadis, Bali and its infidel tourists were a provocation to their ideal of an Islamic superstate from Thailand to Timor. But when Amrozi arrived in Solo, he had no inkling that the peaceful Hindu island would be a target too -- with its excellent air links, its primary use so far had been as a convenient hub to source and store material for campaigns further afield.
Samudra welcomed Amrozi over soup at an Islamic community centre outside Solo known as a JI haunt. They arranged another meeting at the Klewer batik market, when Samudra brought along two bomb-making experts. They told Amrozi what they needed. As in Ambon, Amrozi would be the quartermaster and the mule, knowing only as much as he needed. But this time, the quantities would be much bigger. A van was also needed and it should all be delivered to Bali by late September.
Samudra handed Amrozi the equivalent of $10,000 in a mix of currencies. Amrozi was told that Bali was the target, and assured that victory would be glorious.
The operation was developing quickly. Samudra told his wife they would soon be moving. On Oct. 8, the Samudras moved out. His wife headed west with their four children, and Samudra east to Bali.
Urchins gather on the upper decks of the decrepit boat that ferries traffic from Java to Bali, an hour's passage. The scamps swallow-dive into the murky water and then duck for coins flung by delighted passengers as the ferry retreats from the port, introducing a holiday air to the journey.
Amrozi made the trip in late September, with the Mitsubishi van in the hold, bearing the deadly cargo. Today, several months after the bombings, a car like this would be impounded by soldiers toting sub-machine guns, its occupants arrested. But before last October, security was non-existent.
Amrozi was eager to please Mukhlas, his intense elder brother, who had long regarded Amrozi and his faith as a bit flaky. Amrozi had bought the van from a man called Annas in Tuban village in East Java, not far from Tenggulun. Annas told the police Amrozi paid him about $4,000 for the vehicle.
Amrozi drove it into Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city, to the store of Chinese chemical merchant Silvester Tendean, where he'd filled an earlier explosives order for Samudra in 2000. Mr. Tendean doctored invoices to show that Amrozi had bought cooking salts. Arrested soon after Amrozi, Mr. Tendean is now on trial in Surabaya for his role in various terror campaigns.
While Amrozi set out for Bali, seven hours by road and ferry, the fixers were at work in Denpasar, which is Bali's main town, a short drive from Kuta. Safe houses were rented in at least four locations. The main one was a flat where Samudra stayed. Amrozi arrived the last week of September, checking into Room 101 at the seedy Hotel Harum in central Denpasar. His brother, Ali Imron, told police he arrived about the same time, accompanied by a Malaysian electronics experts called Dr. Azhari who had learned his trade at al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.
Ali Imron has told police he packed the explosives into 12 plastic filing cabinets, each with four drawers. He roped the cabinets together with a plastic tube containing explosive, priming the package with dozens of detonators. The bomb was packed into the van delivered by Amrozi, who then returned home to Tenggulun. A bomb vest was also built -- six pockets filled with plastic PVC tubes containing TNT, wired to a switch to be flicked by the wearer.
Ali Imron said he prepared four detonation options: a remote-control device activated by a cellphone; a standard countdown timed for 45 minutes from activation; switches; and a detonator that automatically engaged when its lid was removed. If Ali Imron's version is correct, it's clear there was a mistrust of some of the operatives.
Ali Imron devised the first two methods as fail safes if the deliverer suddenly tried to opt out.
The Mitsubishi was driven to Jalan Legian, which had been selected by Samudra as the target. Samudra was reportedly praying at a nearby mosque. Ali Imron says he was accompanied by two men, both known by the same nom-de-guerre: Iqbal. One of them was Arnasan, the poor boy from Malimping.
Just before reaching Jalan Legian, Ali Imron left the van and jumped on a motorbike left there by a colleague.
Arnasan drove the van to the Sari Club. One of the Iqbals put on the vest, and stepped from the van at 11:06 p.m.
Samudra maintains that Arnasan was the only bomber, but Ali Imron's version contradicts this. He says there were two, and that Arnasan stayed in the van. But whatever Iqbal's real identity, the last thing he would have heard, as he climbed out of the van, would have been Eminem's Without Me, booming from the Sari Club.
How the Bali bomb plot came together
The first suspect in last year's deadly Bali nightclub bombings went on trial this morning, the first of more than 30 people to be tried from a group accused in the world's single worst terrorist incident since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. Below, based on interviews and police information, is a chronology of how the main suspects are alleged to have coalesced.
The recruiter: Imam Samudra
The organizer: Amrozi
Malimping: Beginning in 2000, Imam Samudra befriends three impressionable youths: Andi, Andri and Arnasan. These three young men will later form the core of a 13-strong terror cell that police now know as the Serang Group.
Serang: On August 23, 2002, Andri and Andi raid a jewellery story in Serang, stealing the equivalent of $60,000 in cash and gold. Most of the loot is handed to Samudra in Jakarta, but the cell members keep some to rent two safe houses in the area.
Tenggulun: A family of devotees spread their own message at the Al-Islam boarding school, which is run by the father of the radical brothers the world now knows as Amrozi, Ali Imron and Ali Ghufron (known as Muklas).
Solo: Samudra meets with Amrozi in Solo to arrange for a van and the bomb ingredients - a role Amrozi previously played in attacks on the Moluccan island of Ambon in 2000. This order is to be delivered to the island of Bali by late September, 2002.
Tuban: In Tuban, Amrozi buys the van from a man called Annas, and drives it to Surabaya.
Surabaya: Amrozi collects the explosives order at the store of Chinese chemical merchant Silvester Tendean.
Denpasar: Amrozi arrives in the last week
of September, to be joined by Samudra in early October. Amrozi's brother Ali
Imron also arrives, accompanied by a Malaysian electronics expert. The bomb is
assembled and driven to the nearby tourist town of Kuta, where Arnasan and
possibly one other bomber detonate