Jakarta, July 19 (DPA) Indonesian police said Sunday one of the suicide bombers in Friday’s hotel attacks in Jakarta had been identified, and blamed a regional terrorist group.
National police spokesman Nana Sukarna said the perpetrators of the bombings were from Al Qaeda-linked South-East Asia group Jemaah Islamiyah, because of similarities in the bombs used.
He explained that bombing of JW Marriott and nearby Ritz-Carlton used devices resembling those employed in a previous Bali attack and one discovered in a recent raid on an Islamic boarding school.
Preliminary results of facial reconstruction had identified one of the two suicide bombers, Sukarna said, adding that both were male.
“One of them has been identified,” Sukarna said without revealing the name. “Another body is still in the process of identification.”
Media reports released the name of the guest in room 1808 of the Marriott as Nurdin Aziz, who checked in two days before the blasts and apparently assembled the bombs in the hotel.
Sukarna said earlier that the search by a special team from the Disaster Victim Identification unit for missing body parts continued after a severed head did not match with either of the two bodies being examined at Jakarta police hospital.
Nine people were killed in the twin blasts, including four foreigners.
At least 53 others, including eight Americans, were injured in the blasts, the first terrorist attack in three years after the country experiencing no bombing incident since 2005.
Terrorist experts said Friday’s bombings at the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta were masterminded by Noordin Mohammed Top, Indonesia’s most-wanted man for his alleged role in a series of bombings since early 2000s.
The head of the Security Ministry’s anti-terrorism desk, Ansyaad Mbai, said officials were coordinating the manhunt with authorities in neighbouring Malaysia.
“At this stage the area of the manhunt for Noordin was also widened not only in areas that were indicated as the location of his network’s hideout, such as Java and Sumatra, but also the other territory in Indonesia,” he was quoted as saying by the state-run Antara news agency.
Looking at the modus operandi, Mbai Saturday said the blasts was the work of the notorious Malaysian bomb-maker, who leads a breakaway faction of Jemaah Islamiyah and is believed to be the mastermind behind all the bombings since 2000.
Police said they suspected Friday’s attacks were carried out by suicide bombers who checked into the hotels as guests and assembled the bombs in one of the hotel rooms.
Footage from security cameras showed one of the suspects with a wheeled bag walking toward Marriott’s restaurant where top local and foreign business executives were holding a breakfast meeting.
It was the second bombing of the Jakarta Marriott. In August 2003, a militant drove a bomb-laden truck into the lobby of the hotel and detonated it, killing 12 people and injuring 150.
Until Friday, Indonesia, the world’s most-populous Muslim country, had not had a major attack since October 2005, when suicide bombers blew up three restaurants in Bali, killing 20 people.
