Jakarta, Aug 12 (DPA) The man killed in a weekend raid by Indonesia’s anti-terrorism police was not the country’s most wanted man, Noordin Mohammed Top, police said Wednesday.
DNA tests proved that the man was Ibrahim, accused of playing a key role in last month’s bombings at the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta, said Edy Suparwoko, head of the country’s police disaster victim identification department.
A day before those attacks, Ibrahim, who worked as a florist at the Ritz-Carlton, had smuggled the bombs and one of the two suicide bombers into the hotels, which are linked by an underground tunnel, said national police spokesman Nanan Soekarna.
“He was the one who controlled and conducted the survey” for the attacks, Soekarna said at a news conference.
Police said they believe Noordin was the mastermind behind the July 17 hotel attacks.
Local television channels, citing unnamed police sources, initially said the man who was killed Saturday in a barrage of police gunfire on a house in the Central Java district of Temanggung was Noordin.
The house was besieged by more than 100 police officers armed with automatic weapons and bombs for 18 hours before its sole occupant was declared dead.
But doubt grew after those who saw the body said it did not resemble Noordin.
The raid followed the arrest of two men believed to be Noordin’s accomplices.
In a separate raid on a house near Jakarta Saturday, police said they killed two men believed to be prospective suicide bombers and seized 500 kg of explosives intended to be car bombs.
Citing a confession from one of five suspects arrested before the raids, police said Noordin held a meeting in late April to discuss a plan to assassinate President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono this month to avenge the execution last year of three militants convicted in the 2002 Bali bombings.
Noordin, believed to be the leader of a splinter group of the radical Islamist terrorist network Jemaah Islamiah, is also accused of masterminding the 2003 suicide bombing on the same Marriott hotel in Jakarta, which killed 12 people, and the 2004 attack on the Australian embassy in the Indonesian capital, in which 11 people were killed.
In a video message, the man believed to be Noordin also claimed responsibility for the triple suicide bombings on restaurants in Bali in 2005.
