Posted on 10/30/2003 5:31:51 AM PST by Dog
Marriott attackers were planning more blasts, police say
JAKARTA : Four men who helped stage a deadly Jakarta hotel bombing were planning more blasts when police raided their hideouts, Indonesia's top detective said.
Two Indonesians, who intended to blow themselves up to avoid capture, were seized in a hotel room before they could detonate five bombs they were carrying.
But two other prime suspects -- Malaysians who were also deeply involved in last year's Bali attack -- fled from detectives who approached the rented home where they were hiding out, detective chief Erwin Mappaseng told a press conference.
Police got their first break when they detained Tohir and Ismail during a dawn raid Wednesday on a cheap hotel at Cirebon in West Java.
After interrogating the pair, detectives staked out a rented house in the city of Bandung and saw Malaysian bombmaker Azahari Husin and compatriot Noordin Mohammad Top approaching it.
The couple apparently became suspicious and backed away, Mapasseng said.
Detectives moved in and some of them pulled out guns "but since they knew both men were armed with explosives and it was a residential area they changed their minds (about shooting)," he said.
"The detectives began chasing the two men who were running down dark alleys in the area and managed to flee," Mappaseng said.
Inside the house police found a vest similar to that worn by one of the Bali suicide bombers, five kilogrammes (11 pounds) of TNT and four home-made bombs. "All four men were planning another vest bomb," Mappaseng said.
National police chief Da'i Bachtiar said separately that, according to the confessions of Tohir and Ismail, Azahari is planning more bombings.
"But with the capture of these two hopefully it will curtail his plan," he said.
The al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terror group is blamed for the Jakarta Marriott Hotel blast, which killed 12 people, the Bali bombings, which killed 202 people in October last year, and for a string of other attacks.
Mappaseng said Azahari and Noordin had presented the plan for the Marriott attack to a top terror suspect called Hambali, who approved it and provided funds.
Hambali, who is believed to be both a top JI and al Qaeda figure, was arrested in Thailand in August and is in US custody at a secret location.
Police say both Azahari, the master bombmaker in the Bali and Marriott attacks, and Noordin, are believed to be wearing explosives-stuffed waist packs.
A national police spokesman, Brigadier General Sunarko Ardanto, said Tohir and Ismail were also "always armed with bombs with the intention that if arrested by police they would use the bombs for suicide".
He said police seized three hand-held bombs from Tohir, 29, and two from Ismail in the hotel room.
The pair told police that explosives used at the Marriott were left over from the Christmas Eve 2000 bombings on churches and priests that killed 19 people nationwide and for which JI is blamed.
Mappaseng said Ismail had helped Azahari make the Marriott bomb while Tohir had bought the van that suicide bomber Asmar Latin Sani drove to the front of the luxury hotel.
Both Tohir and Ismail had prepared themselves as suicide bombers in case Latin Sani should fail.
Twelve people are now in custody for the Marriott blast. Mappaseng said Azahari and Noordin are the last two suspects still at large.
Sounds like the perfect time to be asynchronous.
[BANG! BANG!]
Halt!
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