Author: John Aglionby in Tenggulun,
east Java
Publication: The Guardian, UK
Date: November 11, 2002
URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,837454,00.html
Indonesian police said yesterday
they believed that about 10 people sought in connection with last month's
Bali bomb attacks were still in the country.
The national police chief, General
Da'i Bachtiar, said a number of names had been provided by the main suspect
so far - an Indonesian named only as Amrozi, who has allegedly confessed
to being involved in the October 12 blasts which killed more than 200 people.
"We are convinced they are all still
in Indonesia," Gen Bachtiar told reporters in Jakarta, without saying if
all the suspects were believed to Indonesian nationals. Some of them had
visited Afghanistan, he added.
At the weekend, police and intelligence
officers carried out several raids in their search for accomplices of Mr
Amrozi. Several properties were targeted in Bali and Tenggulun, the home
village of Mr Amrozi, a motor mechanic who has allegedly confessed to having
"field responsibility" for the operation.
A detective involved in the searches
in Tenggulun, 40 miles north-west of Indonesia's second city, Surabaya,
in east Java, said "much useful evidence" was seized from the Islamic boarding
school in the village, including nine videos and photo albums containing
pictures of war training.
"From what Amrozi has told us and
what we have found we are able to intensify our searches," the detective
said. "We believe we are closing in on the rest of the bombers."
The police want to question at least
three other people linked to Mr Amrozi, who lived in Tenggulun, a farming
village with one dusty main street, a few tiny shops, a handful of mosques
and a couple of schools. It is large enough to live in undisturbed - many
residents know of Mr Amrozi but not much about him - but small enough not
to merit a police station or attract the attention of the authorities.
Few eyebrows are raised if people
decide to travel or work overseas, particularly in Malaysia, as Mr Amrozi
did on a couple of occasions when it is claimed he plotted with other terrorists.
"About 50 people leave this village
every year to go and work in Malaysia so no one would be suspicious if
Amrozi said he wanted to do that," said Amir, who lives a few houses away
from the suspect's home.
The village is home to an Islamic
boarding school run by a man with close ties to Abu Bakar Ba'aysir, the
alleged founder and spiritual leader of the radical Islamist group Jemaah
Islamiyah which wants to create a south-east Asian Islamic caliphate and
is widely held to have close links to al-Qaida and to be behind the Bali
bombings.
Indonesia's defence minister, Matori
Abdul Djalil, declared yesterday that Mr Amrozi was a member of Jemaah
Islamiyah. "This is not because of that confession, but I see a number
of things which have been conveyed by the police that they have found with
Amrozi," he said.
Mr Ba'aysir visited Tenggulun at
least once in the last five months, to participate in a leaving ceremony
for the pupils from the al-Islam boarding school. However, it is not certain
whether he had any contact with Mr Amrozi on that visit.
Police said yesterday that Mr Amrozi
had met Mr Ba'aysir, as well as Jemaah Islamiyah's operations commander,
Hambali, and a former pupil of Mr Ba'aysir's school, Fathur al-Ghozi, who
was convicted in the Philippines earlier this year of being behind several
bombings there.
Mr Amrozi is not believed to be
directly involved in the school, "but he regularly came and prayed in the
school mosque", said one of the teachers, Suharja. "He liked the way we
worshipped."
Mr Amrozi, 35, who is twice divorced
and has three children, led a very simple life. His family home is an unfinished
construction of breeze blocks, flimsy plywood doors and cheap roof tiles.
"Since coming back from Malaysia
he has clearly seemed more radical," said Fikri, a man who lives nearby.
"He would sometimes say anti-American things but none of us had any idea
he was involved in anything as big as [the Bali bombings]."
