Man confesses to being Bali bomber say police

Indonesian police said today that a man they are interrogating has confessed to planting a bomb in an attack on Bali nightclub that killed nearly 200 people last month.

National Police Chief Da’i Bachtiar said the man, identified only as Amrozi, told police that he owned the minivan used in the car-bomb attack.

“Amrozi used the car to plant the bomb in Bali,” Bachtiar said. “Amrozi admitted it and we are still chasing his friends.”

Brigadier General Edward Aritonang, spokesman for a team of international investigators, said Amrozi was arrested in East Java province on Tuesday and then flown to Bali.

“The investigation team is still questioning him. There are many things that have to be cross-checked and be studied thoroughly,” he said.

Amrozi was arrested at an Islamic boarding school in the town of Tenggulun. The school head , Dzakaria, said Amrozi also attended a speech at the school by radical Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir.

Amrozi “sometimes came to my school to conduct prayer with us,” said Dzakaria, who, like many Indonesians, uses only one name. “He was not a student here.”

Although no group has claimed responsibility for the blasts, the regional militant Islamic network Jemaah Islamiyah has emerged as the prime suspect.

Police recently arrested Bashir, Jemaah Islamiyah’s alleged spiritual leader, but he has not been declared a suspect in the Bali blasts.

Bashir is being held in a police hospital in Jakarta, and doctors said the 64-year-old cleric is too sick to be questioned. Bashir has denied any links with terrorists and said he won’t cooperate with police.

Dzakaria said that Amrozi worked in Malaysia during the 1990s, a time when Bashir was living there in exile during the dictatorship of Indonesia’s former strongman Suharto. It remained unclear, however, whether the two men ever met in Malaysia.

Police have said the main bomb in the October 12 attack – made with 110 to 220 pounds of explosive – was placed inside a Mitsubishi minivan that was parked in front of one of the nightclubs.

Authorities have detained and questioned at least 20 people over the past two weeks because they resembled suspects depicted in three composite sketches released last week by police. Almost all were released without charges.

About 120 detectives and intelligence officers from Australia, the United States, Britain, Japan and other countries are working on the case with Indonesian investigators.