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| Southeast Asia |
| Two More Marriott Bomb Suspects Bagged |
| 2003-10-30 |
| Police in Indonesia say they have arrested two more suspects in connection with the Marriott hotel bombing in August. The two men were detained in west Java during a police raid. One of the two suspects is believed to have helped assemble the car bomb which exploded outside the entrance of the hotel killing 13 people including the bomber. At least 12 people are now being held in custody in connection with the attack. The two men were arrested during a pre-dawn raid of a hotel in the town of Cirebon in west Java. (knock knock) "Room service" Police say they also found explosive devices during the operation, including pipe bombs. The two suspects have been identified only as Ismail and Tohir. They are on the list of five key suspects identified by police shortly after the Marriott hotel bombing. The remaining three include Noordin Mohammad Top, identified by police as the ringleader of the Marriott attack, and a Malaysian citizen called Azahari Husin, who is accused of assembling both the Marriott explosives and the bombs used in the nightclub attacks in Bali last year. Indonesia’s police chief, Dai Bachtiar, said he believed that Noordin Mohammad Top and Dr Azahari were nearby when Ismail and Tohir were captured. "We found a house where the others had stayed," he said, "but they had already escaped." "Missed them by that much." Intensive efforts are now under way to find them. |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #1 More details: In the first raid at dawn on Wednesday, police swooped on two men with explosives in a hotel room in the town of Cirebon, 140 miles east of Jakarta, arresting a man identified only as Tohir and an accomplice, who had attached bombs to their bodies in a bid to avoid capture. "They were reaching to their backpacks when police besieged them, but failed to trigger the switch," Erwin Mappaseng, head of the national police criminal investigation department, told a news conference. He said the men had selected targets for an attack, including a foreign bank on a busy street in the nearby city of Bandung, southeast of Jakarta. Two Malaysian men, including top electronics expert and bombmaker Azahari, wanted in connection with last year's Bali bombings that killed 202 people and the August Marriott hotel blast that killed 12, escaped a police raid with a quantity of explosives in Bandung later on Wednesday night. He was accompanied by a man identified as Noordin, whose name also features prominently on most wanted lists, police said. Tohir, who was captured in the morning raid, is a key suspect in the Marriott blast in Jakarta, national police chief General Da'i Bachtiar told reporters. "We have detained two people, Tohir and Ismail," Bachtiar said. He said Tohir was one of those who was ready to be part of a suicide squad to attack the Marriott. The police chief had previously said Tohir was among five of Southeast Asia's most wanted militants thought to be hiding in Indonesia. Police said Ismail was believed to have helped to make the Marriott bomb along with Azahari. "Based on confessions from the two men (Tohir and Ismail), Azahari was planning to carry out more attacks but hopefully with the arrest of these two men he may stop the plan," Bachtiar said. No, but he'll have to regroup. That may give you time to find him. |
| Posted by: Steve 2003-10-30 10:43:13 AM |