First Bali blast was suicide bomb, says suspect

One of two blasts in the Bali nightclub bombings came from a suicide bomber’s backpack – a sign Islamic militants in Indonesia are taking their cues from abroad, police say.

Police said a key suspect made the revelation in a confession they hope will reveal more about the inner workings of Jemaah Islamiyah, the group linked to al Qaida that is believed to be behind the blasts.

If Imam Samudra is telling the truth, it would be the first time a suicide bombing had been used as a tactic in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country.

Nearly 200 people, most of them foreign tourists, including 32 Britons, were killed in two near-simultaneous explosions on October 12 in Bali’s nightclub district.

Lt Gen Erwin Mapaseng, a police detective, said the smaller of the two explosions was a bomb a man suspected of the attack was carrying in his backpack. He was identified only as Iqbal.

Citing Samudra’s confession, Mapaseng said Iqbal set off the blast that killed eight people outside one club. A few seconds later, a much bigger bomb went off in a vehicle parked in front of another club.

Hundreds of people fleeing the initial blast were killed when the second bomb exploded.

Officials said they would search for Iqbal’s body in the mortuary in Bali, which still holds about 40 unclaimed bodies.

Samudra, 32, was arrested on Thursday as he tried to flee the island of Java, where his family lives.

Police say he was the ringleader of those who carried out the attack. In particular, Samudra admitted to deciding ”when and where” to place the bombs, said the country’s police chief, Gen Da’i Bachtiar.

Samudra also confessed, police say, to playing a central role in several other bombings in Indonesia in recent years.

Samudra is described as an Afghanistan-trained explosives expert who remained on Bali for four days after the blasts, watching as authorities surveyed his handiwork.

Police said they pinpointed his location by tracking signals from his mobile phone with help from Australian investigators.

After his interrogation at a police station close to where he was arrested, Samudra was briefly paraded, his legs chained, in front of TV cameras.

His brother, Lulu, proclaimed his innocence.

“He couldn’t even stand it when the others in the village let off firecrackers,” said Lulu. “He used to cry.”

Intelligence officials say Samudra is a leading member of Jemaah Islamiyah, a group the United Nations recently placed on its list of terrorist organisations.

His arrest comes more than two weeks after police arrested an Indonesian named Amrozi. Police say Amrozi identified other suspects and confessed to providing the vehicle and chemicals used in the attack.

Samudra was acting on the orders of Jemaah Islamiyah’s alleged operations chief, Riduan Isamuddin, known as Hambali, who remains at large, an intelligence official said.

Two of Samudra’s guards were arrested earlier this week. A third man was detained on Thursday, said Gen I Made Mangku Pastika, heading the international investigation on Bali.

All three had visited Bali prior to the attack to survey potential targets but were not among the main suspects, police said.

Samudra taught at a religious school in Malaysia in the early 1990s run by Hambali and Abu Bakar Bashir, Jemaah Islamiyah’s alleged spiritual leader.

Police have not named Bashir as a suspect in the Bali bombings, but he was arrested after the attack on separate charges of masterminding a string of church bombings in 2000. Bashir denies any involvement.