Indonesian police find bomb cache, arrest 9
Agence France-Presse
First Posted 14:12:00 07/03/2008
JAKARTA -- Nine men arrested in Indonesia's South Sumatra province in connection with a cache of homemade bombs were flown to Jakarta in blindfolds, shackles and under heavy security on Thursday.
The unidentified suspects were arrested in connection with the discovery of some 20 makeshift bombs in the attic of a rented house in Palembang, South Sumatra, on Tuesday, a police source said.
Members of the US and Australian-trained Special Detachment 88 anti-terrorism squad were involved in the raid on the house in the provincial capital, police said.
Several newspapers reported that one of the suspects was a Singaporean but police would not confirm rumors that he was Mas Selamat Kastari, the alleged leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) militant group in Singapore.
Despite a massive police manhunt, the 47-year-old Kastari remains at large more than three months after his escape from a detention centre.
An Agence France-Presse reporter saw the men -- wearing balaclavas, blindfolds and handcuffs -- being transferred from a plane onto police buses at a civilian airport in the capital.
One of the suspects wore a black T-shirt with a logo that said "Suicide."
They were escorted by masked and heavily armed plain-clothes officers and taken to a police headquarters on the southern outskirts of the city.
National police spokesman Abu Bakar Nataprawira confirmed that an unspecified number of arrests had been made in relation to the discovery of the bombs but he could not provide further details.
"The suspects will be brought to Jakarta [on Thursday] for questioning," he said.
"There have been arrests but the details about who they are and what they have done will be announced later today."
Local residents told the Antara news agency that the occupants of the house had moved in only two months ago and rarely socialized with neighbors.
The Singaporean government accuses Kastari of plotting to hijack a plane in order to crash it into Singapore's Changi Airport in 2001. He was never charged, but was being held under a law that allows for detention without trial.
A committee of inquiry found that Kastari, who walks with a limp, escaped through the window of a bathroom where he was taken before a regular visit by his family.
Surveillance cameras that were not working, and a slow reaction from guards, contributed to Kastari's flight, Wong said.
Singaporean officials said in April they believed Kastari was still in Singapore but terrorism experts have said he is likely to have gone underground in the vast archipelago of Indonesia.
Authorities blame JI for a string of regional attacks including the 2002 bombings on the Indonesian resort island of Bali which killed 202 people.
The Kompas daily said 16 of the bombs found in the house were ready to be detonated.
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