12 Nov 2002

Indonesian police reveal details of Bali bomb suspects

SHAWN DONNAN, Jakarta and ERIC ELLIS, Denpasar

AS families of almost 200 people killed in the Bali bombing a month ago today mark the painful date, a clearer picture is emerging of who was behind the worst terrorist attack since September 11, and how and why they acted.
Those who carried out the bombing, police now say, were Indonesian radicals tied to Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), the south-east Asian Islamic terror group, and, by extension, to al-Qaeda.
One or more were trained in Afghanistan. And when they set off a bomb hidden inside a Mitsubishi minivan, destroying the Sari Club, they were hoping to avenge what they viewed as US assaults on the Islamic world.
Amrozi, the middle-aged Indonesian mechanic who is alleged to be the field leader of the operation, was once, according to police, a student of Abu Bakar Bashir, the Islamic cleric thought to be the spiritual leader of JI.
General Made Mangku Pastika, who heads the task force investigating the attack, said yesterday that police were still working to connect Amrozi and his associates directly with Mr Bashir. "We haven't found any evidence that Bashir ordered Amrozi to conduct the blast," he said.
But police say they do know enough to build a rough timeline of how the bombing was planned and what allegedly motivated Amrozi, at least three of his brothers and a half-dozen other acquaintances to bring havoc to Bali.
The idea may have been born at a meeting in southern Thailand, at which JI's senior leaders reportedly decided to attack soft targets in south-east Asia. Amrozi, Gen Pastika said, learned his bomb-making in Afghanistan.
But the planning for the Bali attack really began in early September, according to police.
They say there were meetings in Amrozi's home in Tenggulun, a two-hour drive from Indonesia's second city of Surabaya, and others near Mr Bashir's boarding school in central Java.
Police allege that Amrozi and his associates bought a tonne of ammonium nitrate from a chemical shop near his home. Much of this was then ferried from east Java to Bali, along with Amrozi's new white Mitsubishi minivan.
There, police say, they gathered in a rented two-bedroom apartment to assemble the bomb. They packed it into Amrozi's minivan and drove it to the Sari Club, where it was set off just after 11pm on October 12.
The motive appears to have been raw hatred of America. According to Gen Pastika, Amrozi said he wanted to kill as many Americans as possible and was disappointed when he found out almost half the victims were Australians.
The mechanic was arrested at his home in Tenggulun a week ago, after police traced the minivan to him with the help of experts from Mitsubishi. When investigators raided the home, they allegedly found empty boxes for mobile phones, electrical equipment and ammonium nitrate, all key ingredients in the bomb.
Amrozi and the owner of the chemical shop are the only two listed by police as suspects so far. But investigators say it is only a matter of time before they find all 10 Indonesians they are looking for.
However, the lingering question is who planned and funded the bombing. Speculation has focused on Riduan Isamuddin, or Hambali, the Indonesian thought to be JI's operational head. But Gen Pastika would only say that Amrozi was the "number two" in the operation.
Diplomats in Jakarta say that discovering who was "number one" will be key to any change to travel warnings now in place for Indonesia and other south-east Asian countries.
"The risks are still there and the threats are still there," one Jakarta-based diplomat said last night.