The Age, October 10, 2005 - 1:47PM
Terror chief's wife called Bali, say police
Kuta, Bali
The wife of Jemaah Islamiah's new military commander made several phone calls to
Bali in the lead-up to the triple suicide bombings in Kuta and Jimbaran, Indonesian
police phone intercepts have revealed.
In a sign that two Malaysian bomb experts said to be renegade JI members may still
be operating under the terror network's command, police in central Java said several
phone calls were made by the wife of JI's top military planner, Zulkarnaen, to a mobile
phone in Bali.
Zulkarnaen, also known as Aris Sumarsono or Daud, is one of Asia's most wanted
men and is widely believed to be hiding out in the strife-torn southern Philippines.
But Indonesian police counter-terror teams are also hunting him in East Java, aided
by Australian Federal Police phone intercept experts.
Intelligence sources believe Zulkarnaen was the real planner behind the latest attacks,
which killed 20 innocent people including four Australians.
"Noordin Top and Azahari (Husin) are just his operators. The brains is Zulkarnaen,"
one intelligence figure told the Tempo news magazine.
Police had believed Noordin and the British-educated Azahari had formed their own
radical group amid splits within JI over the use of indiscriminate bombings.
The shadowy Zulkarnaen, believed to be aged about 41, is one of JI's top military
trainers and in 1979 attended the al-Mukmin boarding school at Ngruki, near the
central Java city of Solo, founded by radical cleric Abu Bakar Bashir.
His wife, Rahayuningtyas, still lives near the school with their six children.
Zulkarnaen helped coordinate JI operations during the Muslim-Christian bloodletting in
the Moluccas capital Ambon in the late 1990s, planning operations with Noordin and
Azahari.
He was one of the first Indonesians to travel to Afghanistan to fight invading Russian
forces and quickly rose to become a military instructor.
Rahayuningtyas made several calls from a public phone to Bali before and after the
bombings, including one just moments before one of the blasts, police said.
"Officers are now seriously chasing down those telephone calls," Central Java police
chief Chairul Rasyid told the NusaBali newspaper.
But Rahayuningtyas denied the allegations and said she had not spoken to her
husband since 2002, describing him as an ordinary preacher and trader "regulated by
the Koran".
"I believe my husband is not involved," she told Radio 68H.
She challenged police to prove their allegations and said there was a "blessing"
behind the bombings, "even if it is not clear how or why it happened".
"It is blessed by God. Only God knows why, even it there is bitterness behind it," she
said.
Rahayuningtyas said she did not know about any overseas trips by her husband, who
sometimes disappeared on trading missions to Jakarta and Surabaya.
"We are just ordinary people with some disadvantages," Rahayuningtyas said.
She said she had nor received any support money from her husband for three years
and was surviving by teaching and some minor trading.
Indonesian papers today carried the first living photographs of the man police suspect
to have been one of the three suicide bombers.
The photographs, released by Solo police commander Abdul Madjid, show a
handsome young man in a red T-shirt named Mista, sometimes known as "Gareng".
The photo bears a striking resemblance to police photographs of the severed head of
the bomber who blew himself up inside Raja's Bar and Restaurant in Kuta.
In the photographs Mista seems to have the same nose, hollow cheeks and deep-set
eyes, although his eyebrows are thinner - perhaps scorched by the blast - and his
ears more prominent.
"We haven't reached a conclusion yet. (That) name is still under investigation," Madjid
said.
- AAP
Copyright © 2004. The Age Company Ltd.
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