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A former member of the Indonesian Air Force has confessed to investigators that he assembled the bomb that destroyed the heart of Bali's nightclub district Saturday, killing at least 181 people, an Indonesian security official said Tuesday.
The suspect, who is being held by Indonesian authorities, told investigators that he regretted the massive loss of life, but he has not disclosed who ordered him to make the bomb, according to the security official. The official said the suspect had learned to make explosives while serving in the air force, which later dismissed him for misconduct.
Indonesian investigators at the scene have recovered traces of C-4 plastic explosives, the national police chief, Da'i Bachtiar, said Tuesday. The police said the material was similar to explosives used in August 2000 to bomb the Jakarta residence of the Philippine ambassador to Indonesia, an attack that Philippine intelligence officials have blamed on a radical Islamic network known as Jemaah Islamiyah. That group, which Western and regional intelligence officials say is headed by a radical Indonesian cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir, is active in several Southeast Asian countries.
The police chief also said that investigators were "intensively" interrogating two other men in connection with the bombing in Kuta. Police officials said the two included a guard who witnessed the attack and a man related to the owner of an identification card recovered at the scene. The two men are among about 50 people whom the police say they have questioned.
The Indonesian security source said his government learned a week before the bombing that Muslim extremists were planning to carry out an attack. Security was heightened at 60 locations around the country but not in Bali, because the authorities did not suspect that militants would strike this resort island, the senior official said. Separately, a senior police official said that 5,400 officers were engaged in a massive operation on Bali to determine who was responsible for worst terrorist attack in the history of Indonesia.
Indonesian officials said the authorities also had broadened their investigation and were following leads in East Java, South Sulawesi and Lombok.
In Manado, in northern Sulawesi, the police were questioning two suspects, local residents, in connection with the bombing there Saturday of the Philippine consular office. No one was hurt in that attack. The police said they were not sure if that incident was connected to the Bali bombing.
Agents from the FBI and Australian federal police, as well as Japanese forensic specialists, are in Bali participating in the investigation.
(China Daily October 16, 2002)
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