Indonesian police make first Bali blasts arrest

By Tomi Soetjipto

DENPASAR, Indonesia (Reuters) – Indonesian police have made
their first arrest over this month’s suicide bombings on the
resort island of Bali, picking up a man in East Java suspected
of links to the attacks, police said on Tuesday.

Three suicide bombers killed 20 people when they strolled
into separate restaurants on October 1 and detonated backpacks
laden with explosives. Around 150 people were wounded.

“This person is strongly suspected of having links with the
Bali blasts,” deputy national police spokesman Soenarko Artanto
told a news conference on the island.

Artanto said the man, a construction worker identified only
by the initials HS, was arrested in the East Java provincial
town of Jember on Sunday under the country’s anti-terrorism
laws. He was brought to Bali on Monday.

The spokesman declined to comment on reports that the man
might have shared a room with one of the bombers, or give other
details. East Java lies adjacent to Bali.

The attacks killed 15 Indonesians, four Australians and one
Japanese. They came just days before the third anniversary of
the 2002 Bali nightclub blasts that killed 202 people, mainly
foreign tourists. That anniversary falls on Wednesday.

Police have questioned 230 people over the latest attacks.

Suspicion has fallen on Jemaah Islamiah or a splinter
faction of the shadowy network, seen as the regional arm of
Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda and blamed for the 2002 blasts and
other attacks on Western targets in Indonesia.

One of the three bombers apparently surveyed his target
just hours before the October 1 operation, police said.

Two of the blasts went off along rows of seaside
restaurants on Bali’s Jimbaran Beach while the other exploded
in a steak bar in the tourist hub of Kuta.

“Witnesses saw someone who looked like one of the
perpetrators walking near (the Jimbaran target) wearing a black
T-shirt and trousers and looking restless,” Commissioner
Bambang Kuncoko, a spokesman at the national police
headquarters, said.

With the anniversary of the 2002 bombings approaching and
in the wake of the latest attacks, ordinary Balinese on the
Hindu island are showing growing anger at the impact the
violence will again have on their vital tourism industry.

Citing security concerns, police on Tuesday moved three
inmates sentenced to death for the 2002 bombings from a prison
on Bali to a notorious penal island off Java.

Surrounded by police wearing bullet-proof vests and
carrying automatic weapons, death row inmates Imam Samudra,
Amrozi and his brother Mukhlas, also known as Ali Gufron, were
hustled into armored vehicles outside the Bali jail.

Protesters outside yelled for them to be executed
immediately. Their appeals process has almost been exhausted.

“Amrozi, Imam Samudra and Ali Gufron have been taken to the
Batu prison on Nusakambangan island for security reasons. The
prison has exceeded its capacity,” said I Gede Rata, head of
the justice department in Bali.

“The buildings are run-down, the ground soil is shaky and
the security is quite weak.”

Some 30 militants have been arrested and tried over the
2002 blasts. Execution in Indonesia is carried out by firing
squad.