The Jakarta Post, October 29, 2005
Central Sulawesi Police hunt for minivan bomber
Eva C. Komandjaja, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
The police are currently focusing their search on a suspicious passenger who alighted
from a minibus minutes before a bomb went off in Parigi, Central Sulawesi, on
Thursday seriously injuring one man.
The explosion that detonated in the bus near Toboli village on Thursday was small,
although it seriously injured one person sitting next to it. A 54-year-old man, Murdani,
is currently receiving medical treatment at the Parigi Hospital for first and
second-degree burns all over his body.
National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Aryanto Boedihardjo said on Friday that other
passengers in the bus suspected a man who got off just before the explosion was the
bomber.
"We have questioned the witnesses, who are mostly passengers of the bus, and they
all suspected a man with curly hair wearing a jacket to be the bomber since he sat on
a seat where the bomb went off after he got off," Aryanto said.
"The witnesses said that the man sat on the seat and got off the bus just before the
explosion shook the bus so it was possible for him to put the bomb under the seat,"
Aryanto said.
He said that the suspicious passenger got in the bus from Mamboro bus terminal and
got off somewhere in Toboli village. Eleven people were on the bus that was traveling
from the predominantly Muslim provincial capital of Palu to the largely Christian town
in Tentena.
Police said their investigations revealed the bomb was a low-explosive home-made
device using black powder -- a mixture of sodium nitrate, charcoal and sulphur -- and
ball-bearings. The police also found detonators, a fuse and nine-volt battery on the
bus.
Nine volt batteries were also used in previous larger-scale explosions such as in Bali
in early October as well as other bomb attacks in Jakarta. According to convicted
2002 Bali bomber, Ali Imron, the nine-volt battery was one of Azahari's bomb
trademarks.
Azahari bin Husin and Noordin Mohd. Top are the country's two most-wanted
terrorists, believed to be the masterminds behind a series of explosions in the
country.
However, the police refused to link the recent explosion in Central Sulawesi to others
that have occurred in other parts of the archipelago, saying it was too early to make
any conclusions.
"We will try to track down this man first, since we already knew when he got off from
the bus and where he started and we also learned about his characteristics. Hopefully
this would help us to find him," he said.
Poso has been a flash-point of sectarian clashes between Muslims and Christians
that left more than 1,000 people dead in two years of bloodshed up to 2001.
Until August this year, at least four bombs -- two of them in Poso city -- have
exploded. The bombings at Tentena market in May this year that killed 21 people
were the second deadliest in Indonesia since the Bali bombings of 2002 that killed
202 people and the recent Bali bombs that killed 23 and injured more than 150.
In May, two bombs ripped through a crowded market in the predominantly Christian
area of Tentena, killing 21 civilians and injuring 70 others.
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