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Jakarta blast a suicide attack
07/08/2003 09:54 - (SA)
Jakarta - Indonesian police said on Thursday the Jakarta hotel bombing was a suicide mission and that they believed they knew the attacker's identity, as officials said the investigation was making rapid progress.
Brigadier General Gorries Mere, one of the police force's top detectives, told ABC radio in Australia that a man named Asmal was most likely the driver of the van that was packed with explosives and blew up at the front of the JW Marriott Hotel on Tuesday.
Mere said police had intercepted an e-mail from Asmal six-weeks ago in which he expressed a desire to launch a suicide attack.
He said the message included coded terms used by Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), giving potentially the strongest clue yet the regional terrorist organisation was involved in the bombing.
"In our interception, that mentions he wants to marry as soon as possible," Mere said.
"It really it is a...code word of JI...he wants to make a suicide bomb."
Mere said police would take DNA samples from members of Asmal's family and attempt to match them with remains found in the van.
When contacted by AFP after his radio interview, Mere denied making the comments despite them being clearly heard on the airwaves. Other investigators have so far been careful not to give out too many details.
The Koran Tempo newspaper also quoted Jakarta's deputy police chief, Brigadier General Nanan Sukarna, as saying a hotel security camera showed the van paused in the driveway before it exploded.
"Because the car stopped, two security guards approached it. Before they could ask the driver to move his car, the bomb exploded," the paper quoted Sukarna as saying.
Sukarna said the driver was believed to be the bomber.
Indonesian police also confirmed on Thursday that 10 people had been died in the blast and 146 were injured, after conflicting reports put the death toll as high as 16.
Jakarta police spokesperson Prasetyo said the death toll was 10, including one foreigner, Dutch businessman Hans Winkelmolen. Indonesian press reported many of the other victims were local taxi drivers.
Meanwhile Australan Foreign Minister Alexander Downer praised the Indonesian investigators, who have quickly drawn firm links between Tuesday's blast and the bombing in Bali last year that killed 202 people.
The similarities have raised strong suspicions that JI, which is accused of carrying out the Bali bombing, was also responsible for this week's carnage.
"Certainly it seems that they are making some progress in their investigations, in fact rather rapid progress and that is obviously a good sign," Downer said.
The chief Indonesian police investigator into the Bali bombings, I Made Mangku Pastika, also expressed confidence in the progress of the Jakarta investigation.
"Sure it (the Jakarta attack) will be solved as quickly as the Bali bombing," Pastika told reporters.
Pastika also became the latest high-ranking Indonesian official to link the two blasts and point a tentative finger at JI.
"It looks like (JI) because of the modes operandi, the substance they used, the car bomb," Pastika said.
Pastika was speaking outside court in Bali while testimony was read out against Amrozi, who will later Thursday become the first of the more than 30 people arrested over the Bali bomb to have a legal judgement passed against him. Amrozi faces the death penalty.
Indonesia's police chief, General Dai Bachtiar, late on Wednesday also linked the Jakarta bombing to JI and warned of fresh attacks.
Bachtiar said documents seized from a group of nine JI suspects arrested last month show "they will do terror activities again in a number of cities, including Jakarta".
There had been speculation that a list of targets police recovered in the raids had included the Marriott, but Downer said he had checked the reports with Australian intelligence authorities and that was false.
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