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| Southeast Asia |
| Bali boomers trained in the Philippines. Wotta surprise. |
| 2005-10-05 |
| INTELLIGENCE officials investigating last weekend's suicide bombings in Bali are following a lead that the bombers may have been "clean skins" schooled at the Abu Sayyaf Group training grounds on The Philippines island of Mindanao. They believe the Jemaah Islamiah terrorist network has been using The Philippines as a training base, as authorities have made it harder for them to train and plan operations on Indonesian soil in bases such as Maluku and Sulawesi. A study published this week by US terrorism expert Zachary Abuza exposes close links between Indonesian terror groups including JI and Laskar Jundullah and the Philippines-based ASG and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Dr Abuza saidthe technical capacity of the Abu Sayyaf Group in bomb-making has increased dramatically in the past year. "The ASG has emerged as a serious security threat to Philippine and arguably regional security," Dr Abuza said. In Bali yesterday, police were piecing together a detailed picture of the bombs that killed 22 people, including four Australians, in Saturday night's three co-ordinated attacks. The bombs appeared to consist of bolts and ball-bearings wrapped around a single sticks of TNT, detonated with the help of 9-volt batteries. Police believe the simpler, smaller construction, compared with earlier JI bombings in Indonesia, is further evidence that the group has switched tactics. Police continued to interview a man considered a chief suspect who was arrested within hours of the attack. He was taken to various locations yesterday in the hope that he would help identify three men suspected of remotely triggering the devices. One of the ringleaders of the 2002 Bali bombings, Ali Imron, told an Indonesian newspaper he believed JI leader Azahari Husin may have been forced to switch tactics since the 2003 arrest of operations chief Hambali. Hambali was the link-man for funding and support between Jemaah Islamiah and al-Qaeda until his arrest by Thai police. "That may be right," Imron, younger brother of death-row Bali bombers Amrozi and Mukhlas, said. "But if they are not running out (of explosives), there could be another bombing." According to JI expert Sidney Jones, the network's leading bomb-makers, Dulmatin and Umar Patek are reported to be in the southern Philippines. "They appear to be not only actively recruiting new trainees, but helping to up the technical capacity of Abu Sayyaf," she said last month. It emerged yesterday that police had conducted raids in the Balinese capital, Denpasar, and other cities across the archipelago as they hunted for clues to the gang behind the attack. Residents in the central Denpasar suburb of Kreneng revealed that at least 40 police had descended on their sleepy market district within an hour of the explosions, searching for anyone "acting strangely". Police returned on Monday night. There were reports of two men with distinctive east Javanese accents acting suspiciously around the cafes at Jimbaran, south of the main tourist centre at Kuta, shortly before two bombs exploded there on Saturday night. Another detective said he understood a man named Abdullah, arrested trying to flee Bali on Sunday, was being taken to a places connected with the inquiry, based on information the detainee was giving to investigators. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |