JAKARTA, 12 November 2005 — Three suicide bombers who killed 20 people in restaurants on Indonesia’s Bali last month made videos in which they condemned the United States and said they were ready to die, the national police chief said yesterday.
The videos were seized this week as part of raids in which one of Asia’s top militants, Azahari Husin, was killed. It is the first time police have said Indonesian bombers have appeared on tapes ahead of blasts, a practice more common among suicide attackers in the Middle East.
Gen. Sutanto said the bombers were seated and unarmed when they spoke in a mixture of Indonesian and Arabic. Among a total of four tapes, there were instructions on how to assemble bombs and plans for the Oct. 1 Bali restaurant attacks, he said.
“There was a taped video of the three bombers before they carried out their suicide (mission), talking about their belief, arguing it’s permissible to attack targets deemed as obstructing injustice,” Sutanto told Reuters by telephone. “There was one message to their families, saying they were ready to die and that soon they will be in heaven. They looked very adamant with the teaching they had received ... They showed no traces of doubt.” Police this week linked the Oct. 1 attacks to Azahari, who had been the top bomb-maker in Jemaah Islamiah, a shadowy group seen as the Southeast Asian arm of Al-Qaeda and blamed for a string of bombings in Indonesia.
Azahari was killed on Wednesday in the East Java town of Batu by anti-terrorism police who discovered his hide-out. The three bombers walked into restaurants on Bali on Oct. 1, detonating explosives-laden backpacks almost simultaneously.
Sutanto said the tapes and identification cards of the three suicide attackers were found on Wednesday in the central Java city of Semarang at a house they suspect was rented by Noordin M. Top, their most wanted militant after Azahari.
The seizure coincided with the arrest on Wednesday of a militant in Semarang who had recently come from where Azahari was hiding in East Java, helping tip off police about his location. Top, however, had eluded capture, police said.
Asked if the bombers had condemned the West, particularly the United States, Sutanto said: “Yes, among others. And also clerics whom they think are not implementing correct teachings.”
Sutanto said the tapes would be shared with Islamic clerics in the world’s most populous Muslim nation.
“We will show these to clerics so that they will realize there have been continuous efforts to influence the young generation to carry out wrong actions,” Sutanto said.
