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| Southeast Asia | |
| Bomber named as hunt quickens | |
| 2005-10-06 | |
| FIVE elite police teams began scouring the Indonesian archipelago by helicopter yesterday as the hunt for senior members of the Bali terror network was stepped up after the first suicide bomber was identified. Police in Surakarta, central Java, confirmed yesterday a man known as Gareng had been "a target of our investigations" since well before the weekend's blasts, but that he had escaped their surveillance recently. Police believe Gareng was the suicide bomber responsible for the last of three attacks on Saturday night. Husband and wife Colin and Fiona Zwolinsky and Jennifer Williamson, all of Newcastle in NSW, were killed in that assault, on Nyoman Cafe on Jimbaran Bay, south of Kuta. Mrs Williamson's husband, Bruce, and others from a large group of Newcastle holidaymakers were seriously injured. Surakarta police said they recognised Gareng from their files on Wednesday, after photographs of the three suicide bombers were distributed by investigators in Denpasar and published in newspapers early this week. "We matched that to an old photograph we have," a Surakarta investigator said. A source close to senior police in Jakarta said the investigation was now focused on searching for relatives and friends of the bombers, none of whose identities has been publicly released, and on rounding up people involved with the 2002 attacks. One of the teams is focused on east Java, where investigations are homing in on an area in the north around the town of Lamongan, near the provincial capital, Surabaya. Original Bali bomber Amrozi was arrested in the same region, at his home in the village of Tenggulun. The field teams are under the command of Indonesian counter-terrorist chief Gorries Mere. Another team is based in East Nusa Tenggara province, whose capital is Lombok, immediately to the east of Bali, and which stretches east to the border with East Timor. A third team is based in Banten province, west Java, and two more teams are based in Bali. The squads use helicopters to move quickly from town to town as they piece together elements of the bombers' trail. In the east Java town of Jember yesterday, local police said the region was on high alert for anyone on terrorist watchlists. In Bali, public access to the areas around the three bomb sites - two cafes in the upmarket dining area of Jimbaran Bay, south of Kuta, and Raja's restaurant in Kuta Square - is being restored, with police lines now drawn back to cover just the actual crime scenes. Investigation spokesman Brigadier General Soenarko dismissed reports yesterday that a man had been arrested in west Java on Wednesday based on his resemblance to fugitive terror mastermind Azahari Husin. Azahari, a Malaysian scientist who studied in Australia, and his associate Noordin Top, are being sought for their roles in the 2002 Bali bombings as well as in the latest atrocity. "I can tell you a man was arrested by immigration police in Sukabumi, west Java, but we can state there is as yet no connection to this case," General Soenarko said. "His name was Masnin Hasin, a Malaysian who after interrogation was found to have passports issued by Singapore and Malaysia as well as many ID cards. He is still in custody in West Java."
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| Posted by:Steve |