Indonesian police said yesterday they had arrested a man suspected of transporting explosives to a Malaysian extremist believed to be behind last week's deadly bomb attack on Australia's Jakarta embassy.
The arrest is the first directly linked to the Sept. 9 blast in which nine died and 180 were injured, although police say a total of eight terror suspects have been detained across the central island of Java since the attack.
Police chief Da'i Bachtiar said the unidentified man had admitted carrying packages of explosives for Azahari Husin, a fugitive bombmaker suspected with compatriot Noordin Mohammad Top of carrying out several major terror attacks.
"We have someone in our hands and this individual has said that before the bombing incident he was with Azahari," Bachtiar told reporters.
"He has admitted that before the incident he was carrying packages of [explosive] materials."
The embassy bomb is thought to be the work of the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah group blamed for attacks including the October 2002 Bali bombings in which 202 died, and one last August on Jakarta's Marriott hotel that killed 12.
Bachtiar said the latest arrest, made at an undisclosed location near Jakarta, appeared to be the closest link yet to the Malaysians, who carry a capture reward of two billion rupiah (US$220,000).
He said police were maintaining an intense hunt for more suspects fearing the bombers would strike again.
The detained suspect had indicated the explosives he had passed to Azahari had yet to be assembled into a bomb, making the capture of the Malaysians a top priority, Bactiar said.
"It is an absolute must," he said. "We still don't know if [Azahari] made just that one bomb or whether he made many others."
Both Australian and Indonesian police have warned of further attacks in Jakarta, naming Western embassies, hotels and apartment blocks catering to foreigners as potential targets.
President Megawati Sukarnoputri has placed the country on "full alert" following the embassy blast and ahead of Sept. 20 elections, deploying an extra 200,000 police to sensitive locations.
Bachtiar said police had also uncovered two new possible hiding places of the Malaysians in addition to accommodation near Jakarta's airport, where an earlier raid uncovered traces of explosives.
According to one detective attached to anti-terror operations, eight suspects have so far been arrested since the embassy bombing, but none of the others have been confirmed as linked to the attack.
"So far eight people from East Java and West Java have been temporarily detained for questioning in connection to the embassy attack," a police detective said on condition of anonymity.
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