JAKARTA, 13 August 2003 — The Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terror group blamed for the Bali and Jakarta hotel blasts has formed a special unit numbering 10-15 potential suicide bombers, a report said yesterday.
Indonesia’s respected Tempo news magazine said a man called Mustofa, arrested during police raids in early July, had confessed to preparing the “ready to die” squad known as Laskar Khos, or Special Militia.
The Al-Qaeda-linked JI used suicide bombers to kill 202 people in Bali nightclubs last October.
Indonesia’s security minister said last week he was “almost certain” last Tuesday’s Marriott Hotel bombing in Jakarta was a suicide attack. An Indonesian man who was severely burned in the Marriott bombing died yesterday in hospital, bringing the death toll to 12.
Top detective Erwin Mappaseng declined comment on the reported suicide squad but noted strong similarities between the two attacks. He said police are investigating whether two alleged Bali bomb makers were also involved in the Marriott blast.
Mappaseng, asked whether Bali suspects Dulmatin and Azahari Husin were involved, told reporters: “I can’t yet... clarify because that is the direction we’re going in.”
Dulmatin, an Indonesian, and Azahari Husin, a Malaysian university professor, are among several key suspects still on the run after last October’s Bali attack.
“Yesterday we already started chasing the (Marriott) suspects,” Mappaseng said, declining to provide names. The United States has warned that extremists could be plotting more attacks against Americans or US interests in Indonesia following the hotel blast.
Indonesian prosecutors have alleged JI is headed by Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, but he denies the group even exists.
Bashir is on trial for allegedly authorizing Christmas Eve attacks on Indonesian churches and priests that killed 19 people in 2000 and plotting to assassinate Megawati Sukarnoputri before she became president. Prosecutors urged a court yesterday to sentence Bashir to 15 years in jail for treason.
However, a hard-line Indonesian group agreed on yesterday to retain Bashir as its leader for another five years.
The Indonesian Mujahedeen Council (MMI) also urged the government to acquit the detained Bashir of all charges.
The Tempo report did not make clear whether 10-15 was the total number of potential suicide bombers or whether each cell contained that number.
Tempo based its account of Mustofa’s confession on a police source.
The magazine said Ali Ghufron alias Mukhlas, who is accused of having overall responsibility for the Bali bombing, belonged to one cell. Mustofa himself belonged to another cell “and there are still other cells yet to be caught,” it said.
“They are armed and are experts at bomb-making,” Tempo’s source said, adding that each group was commanded by a veteran of the Afghanistan war against the former Soviet Union.
Mustofa was one of nine alleged JI members arrested during raids in the Jakarta area and in Semarang in Central Java. Police seized 25 sacks of potassium chlorate — enough to build several Bali-sized bombs — and several shoulder-launched rockets.
They also seized TNT, detonators, ammunition, rifles, binoculars, JI documents, a booklet of church service schedules and also CDs and cassettes on JI.
A senior member of Megawati’s party has told AFP he and three other senior party members were named as targets in the JI documents.
Police have said “about five” political leaders and high-profile individuals were named as targets along with several shopping centers.
But they said they have no information about a report in Monday’s Los Angeles Times which said the Jakarta headquarters of several US oil firms were found on the target list.
Police confirmed that body parts found at the scene of the Marriott blast belong to a JI member identified as Asmar Latinsani, 28. Mappaseng said Monday night he could not confirm whether Asmar had driven the van which blew up. One of the nine men arrested with Mustofa grabbed an M-16 rifle, ran into a bathroom and shot himself dead even though he was handcuffed, police said.
