Indonesia blast: Familiar terror rears
its ugly head By Andreas Harsono
JAKARTA - A day after a powerful car bomb was
detonated outside the Australian Embassy here, killing
at least nine people, Indonesian police are suggesting
that the chief suspects in the blast are men they were
already pursuing for past bombings on the resort island
of Bali and near Jakarta's JW Marriott Hotel.
Most of the bombers in the two earlier incidents
have been arrested, and Indonesian judges have sentenced
three of them to death. But master bombers Azahari Husin
and Noor Din Mohammad Top, two Malaysian citizens
allegedly involved in producing the deadly 2002 Bali
bombs that killed 202 people, mostly Australian
tourists, and the Marriott Hotel bomb that killed 12
people in August last year, have twice managed narrowly
to escape the dragnet set up by police.
On
Thursday morning, just an hour before the blast,
Indonesia's police chief Da'i Bachtiar was meeting with
a parliamentary commission where he was briefing them
about his attempts to arrest Azahari and Top, both of
whom are allegedly linked to Jemaah Islamiya (JI) - a
regional terrorist network that aims to create a
pan-Islamic state in Southeast Asia.
Halfway
through Bachtiar's briefing, an aide notified him of the
explosion. Bachtiar then asked the commission to adjourn
the hearing, saying, "My men will take care of that [the
bombing], but it just shows us how dangerous it is to
have people like them [Azahari and Top] on the run."
After a brief investigation, Bachtiar told
reporters late on Thursday, "We could see similarities
between this bombing and the car bombs that exploded in
Bali and the Marriott." But, he added, "it is still too
early to prove that Jemaah Islamiya is behind this
bombing, although there is [the] possibly of a suicide
bomber here like the others."
On Friday morning,
Suyitno Landung, head of the police Criminal
Investigation Department, told a local radio station
that witnesses had seen a green Daihatsu Zebra car
explode right in front of the gates of the embassy.
"It exploded right away, so we have assumed the
perpetrator was still in the car," Landung told El
Shinta radio. Suicide bombers, allegedly from JI, were
also used in the Bali and Marriott Hotel blasts.
Some governments and certain intelligence
agencies claim JI is an al-Qaeda-linked terrorist
organization and allege that the Islamic grouping's
members have trained with al-Qaeda militants in
Afghanistan.
"[Islamic] militants who have been
arrested recently said that there were three men who
were ready to become suicide bombers," Landung said on
Friday.
That same day Jemaah Islamiya, in an
Internet statement, reportedly claimed responsibility
for the deadly attack on the Australian Embassy. The
statement describes Australia as "one of the worst
enemies of God". It says the bombing was a martyr
operation carried out to settle accounts, and warns of
more bombing unless Australia withdraws its forces from
Iraq. (Australia has about 850 troops in and around Iraq
and was the first country, apart from the United States
and the United Kingdom, to contribute forces for the
invasion of Iraq last year.)
Prime Minister John
Howard, however, said he did not know whether the
statement was genuine. "I don't know whether that is a
genuine message from Jemaah Islamiya or not. Sometimes
these website messages turn out to be fraudulent," he
said.
According to the latest estimates, at
least 173 people were injured in Thursday's bombing,
though a spokesman for the Australian Embassy said no
one inside its heavily fortified compound was killed or
badly injured.
The nine dead - all Indonesians -
included policemen, embassy security guards and
passers-by. The wounded were mainly people who worked
near the embassy and were cut by flying glass and
debris.
"It was an enormous bomb. The [great
size] of the crater ... the police truck outside has
been blown to bits ... it's like the wind has been
pushed out of you," embassy media officer Elizabeth
O'Neill told Australia's Nine TV Network.
Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Marty
Natalagawa also expressed his shock over the embassy
blast when speaking to reporters.
"This is an
attack not only against Australian society, Australian
government - since the target was obviously the
Australian Embassy, it seems - but also an attack on all
of us, on decent people and civilized governments,
nations," he said.
"This is not about Australia.
This is not about Indonesia. This is about all those
decent people who just want to get on with their life
without having to fear this type of heinous, cowardly
act on the part of the terrorists," Natalagawa said.
"We as a government have been extremely
dedicated in trying to combat the threat of terror, and
yet again we have to suffer this attack earlier this
morning," he said. "It's all about resilience, I think.
But we'll pick ourselves up and go after these people."
