Police have bomb suspect list

October 3, 2005 - 8:56PM

Indonesian investigators have compiled a list of possible names of Saturday's suicide bombers and have sent body samples to Jakarta for DNA testing and identification.

Meanwhile, Indonesian security bosses suggested the three bombs might have been triggered remotely by mobile phones by three accomplices still at large, possibly on Bali.

In addition, analysts speculated that the attacks were the work of a splinter group within the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) terror organisation, known as "Thoifah Muqatilah", or the combat unit - possibly led by Malaysian bomb experts Azahari Husin and Noordin Mohammad Top.

As Australian Federal Police (AFP) joined the probe, sources at Denpasar police headquarters said detectives were working off a list of people they suspected were the dead bombers.

Indonesian newspapers carried graphic pictures of their severed heads with a public call for information on their identities.

"We have some names," a senior source said.

The grisly pictures of three heads, released by Bali police chief General Made Mangku Pastika overnight, showed clean-shaven young men and were clearly identifiable.

One of the heads was a hollow-cheeked man with his eyes wide open.

The head of disaster-victim identification for the bombings, Dr Soegeng Hidayat, said DNA samples had been sent to Jakarta where detectives would seek matches against blood samples from the suspects' families.

Separately, Indonesia's anti-terror desk chief Major General Ansyaad Mbai said mobile phone calls from three accomplices might have triggered the explosions, which ripped through restaurant diners in Kuta and Jimbaran, killing 27 people including up to four Australians.

"Based on our past experience, we think each suicide bomber was accompanied by another who triggered the bomb," he said.

"It means there are at least three other perpetrators on the run."

Pastika also said there were at least six people in the bombers' group and security had been tightened across Bali in a bid to stop them escaping.

Mbai said there may be many more as the bombers would have required a surveillance operation, map makers and someone to measure out steps in the operation.

The 2002 Bali bomb investigation netted more than 30 suspects, he added.

Specialist AFP bomb experts were today working alongside Indonesian officers at the two-storey Bali forensic headquarters to work out how the bombs were triggered.

One AFP officer, who asked not to be identified, said he was sceptical about the possibility of a mobile phone detonator, but the investigation was still in the early stages.

Leading terror expert Sidney Jones said the bombers may have belonged to a radical new militant brigade with the Arabic name Thoifah Muqatilah, or the "combat unit".

The group, which Indonesian police have called a "suicide brigade", may have been recruited by from the ranks of the al-Qaeda-linked JI network.

"I don't know for certain," she said.

"I have heard it referred to as a splinter group, but I've also heard they are recruiting from within Jemaah Islamiah."

Jones said the bombers may be veterans of vicious ethnic conflicts in areas such as central Sulawesi and Ambon, where Muslim-Christian bloodletting has raged for years.

"They have experience of fighting in those sort of conflict areas," she said.

Jones praised the fast response by police and said it was "very, very, very difficult to prevent attacks that involve suicide bombers".

Authorities also needed to look beyond immediate investigations and look deeper into the networks behind the attacks to help prevent similar bombings in future, she said.

"It's not a question of closing down the radical pesantrens (Islamic schools)," Jones said.

"They need to develop some system of monitoring teaching in all the schools - public and private - so they know something more about what is going on in there."

Above all, Indonesia's fledgling democracy must resist the temptation to involve the army alongside police in the hunt for Azahari and Noordin, because it could further harden radical opposition to the government, Jones said.

"That would be a major mistake. You don't want to go back to a military solution."

Mbai said the bombers were unlikely to have been recruited alone and there were likely more suicide attackers awaiting an opportunity.

"There are others who have the same radicalness as they have," he said.

He defended the government's refusal to outlaw JI and other radical groups, saying there was not enough evidence to ban them.

