The Australian, October 11, 2005
Wife rang JI leader in Bali days before attack
Sian Powell, Jakarta correspondent
INDONESIAN police claim the wife of a Jemaah Islamiah leader telephoned her
husband in Bali just three days before the triple-suicide bombings on the island on
October 1.
Rahayuningtyas rang elusive JI military commander Zulkarnaen from a public
telephone shop in the central Java village of Surakarta, police said yesterday.
"In the three days before the Bali bombing a person we suspect was involved rang
directly to Bali," Surakarta police chief Abdul Madjid told The Australian.
Police are searching for five suspects -- four men and a woman -- who entered Bali a
week before the bombings.
Rahayuningtyas told a local radio station yesterday she had not spoken to her
husband since late 2002. She said she didn't know where her husband was, but was
nevertheless sure he had nothing to do with the bombings.
Abdul Madjid -- who had earlier claimed police missed catching notorious terrorist
ringleader Noordin Top by a matter of hours despite convincing evidence to the
contrary -- said police were investigating the call.
A Malaysian cleric, known as Muhammad Isnun, detained in central Java on the
weekend, has been transferred to regional police headquarters in Semarang for further
questioning, police said.
Surakarta police also released a photograph of a young man named Mista, alias
Gareng, who an informant had said resembled one of the Bali bombers.
However, the photograph looked unlike any of the pictures of the suicide bombers'
decapitated heads, with marked differences in bone structure.
Zulkarnaen's wife said she lived quietly in Surakarta, with her six children, in a house
near the notorious Islamic school founded by extremist preacher Abu Bakar Bashir,
who is serving 30 months' jail for his role in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202
people, 88 of them Australians.
Refusing to condemn outright the October 1 blasts that killed 23 people, including four
Australians, she said there was always a meaning behind events. "Hopefully this will
be blessed by Allah, even though there's bitterness behind it," she said.
Dozens of Balinese, furious at the prospect of another extended economic slump
brought on by the second round of Bali blasts, yesterday demanded the best-known
of the 2002 Bali bombers, Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, be executed immediately.
However, the three Bali bombers on death row -- Amrozi, his brother Mukhlas and
their colleague Imam Samudra -- have not yet exhausted the appeal process.
Experts say Indonesian police are publicly chasing down as many leads as possible
in the hopes of spooking any suspects into flight. Police have known Zulkarnaen's wife
has been living in Surakarta for years, but any monitoring of her movements has been
kept a secret until now.
Regarded as one of the more lethal brains in the JI network, Zulkarnaen was believed
to have been in contact with al-Qa'ida and the leader of an elite squad of extremists
named Laskar Khos.
Accused of playing a part in the 2002 bombings, Zulkarnaen, also known as Daud, is
thought to have been involved in the 2003 blast at Jakarta's Marriott Hotel.
About 40, he is thought to be slim and short, although his wife refused to confirm this.
"I can't say," she told the radio station. "I have never measured his height."
An Australian Federal Police spokeswoman said agents in Australia had collected
4808 questionnaires from people returning from Bali in the past week, which had
identified 214 people with information that might assist their investigation. More than
40 Australian investigators are working in Bali on the case.
© The Australian
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