Indonesia pledges terror crackdown

Indonesia today pledged to press ahead with tough new anti-terror laws and formed an international team to hunt down the culprits behind the Bali nightclub bombing that killed 33 Britons.

Police on the resort island said they had detained two Indonesian men for further questioning. They are a security guard and the brother of a man whose ID card was found at the blast scene in Kuta Beach.

US Ambassador Ralph Boyce disclosed that in the month before the attack, he and other US envoys had discussed the threat of attacks against US targets with Indonesian officials.

But he said the warnings were not specific to Indonesia. They coincided with a temporary closure of embassies in Jakarta and other regional capitals due to terrorist threats during the September 11 anniversary.

Even as the government in Jakarta vowed to fight terrorism more aggressively, Indonesia’s security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhyono claimed that Jemaah Islamiyah – an al-Qaida-linked Islamic extremist group identified by Australia and others as a likely culprit – does not even exist in Indonesia.

And the spiritual head of Jemaah Islamiyah denied the group existed at all, and denied al-Qaida was tied to the attack which killed at least 183 people, most of them foreign tourists, and left hundreds more injured.

“There is no link between al-Qaida and the bomb blast,” Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir said, calling the accusations “the invention of infidels”.

Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda said the government was working on giving President Megawati Sukarnoputri authority to impose, by decree, a long-stalled anti-terrorism law.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who is visiting Jakarta, said Indonesia and Australia have agreed to form a joint intelligence team in the wake of the blast and have invited other nations to join, Downer said.

Downer said officials still “do not have any hard evidence as to who is responsible” for the explosion.

Australia, which has posted a €1m-plus reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the attack, has sent more than 40 investigators to Bali to help with the investigation.

They included forensic specialists, victim identification officers and bomb blast experts. Britain, the US, Germany and France have sent smaller teams.

National Police spokesman General Saleh Saaf said investigators had found what police believe to be the residue of chemicals used in the bomb’s detonator. The chemical traces, which included evidence of the explosive TNT, were found spattered onto a motorbike parked near the scene.

Traces of the military explosive C-4 – a plastic explosive used in the attack two years ago on the USS Cole in Yemen – were also found at the scene.

The Indonesian government is struggling to shake off its image that it ignored months of warnings about terrorists being active here, particularly Jemaah Islamiyah, which wants to establish a pan-Islamic state in Southeast Asia.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard today said he had received no specific intelligence warning that Bali might be targeted prior to the blast.

Senior Indonesian intelligence officials said a former air force lieutenant colonel with a background in explosives had been questioned by intelligence officers after the bombing, and would be questioned tomorrow by police.

But they denied he was a suspect or had confessed, as some reports said today.

The officer, who received training in the US and was discharged from the air force a year ago, lives in the area near the blast and had been questioned because he had rushed to the scene.

Suspicion in the blast has fallen heavily on Jemaah Islamiyah, which has been accused of plotting to attack Western embassies in Singapore earlier this year. Malaysia and Singapore have arrested scores of suspected members.

Malaysian police today arrested five suspected members of the group. They are not believed to have any involvement in the Bali attack, Malaysian national police chief Norian Mai said.

Foreign countries have repeatedly urged Indonesia to arrest Bashir, who runs an Islamic boarding school in the country. He denies any involvement and the government has not moved against him, fearing a backlash by extremists.

Bashir was scheduled to submit to police questioning today and tomorrow, at his own initiative, to press a libel suit against Time news magazine over an article that implicated him in terrorist activities.

“I have not heard that there is a warrant for my arrest,” he said. “It is like a witch hunt. They are cracking down on Muslim fundamentalists.”

“I will not answer any questions about the Bali bombing,” he said.