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.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS