Bali bomber 'has confessed'

5.40pm

Indonesian police say the man suspected of masterminding last month's devastating Bali bombings has confessed to planning and carrying out the attack.

Imam Samudra, 35, was arrested today in a town near the capital, Jakarta, after two other men believed to be his bodyguards were taken into custody.

The Associated Press quotes the head of the investigation, General I Made Mangku Pastika, as saying Samudra "has already confessed".

Samudra's sister identified a police photo as being that of her brother, said AP.

But in an interview on Friday on the SCTV network, she said the family wanted additional proof that the man in custody was in fact Samudra.

More than 180 people, most of them Western tourists, were killed in the bomb attacks which devastated a nightclub district in the Kuta beach area of Bali, leaving many of the victims burned beyond recognition or literally blown to bits. Three New Zealanders were killed in the blast.

Some officials, including Indonesia's defence minister, have linked the attacks to al Qaeda and the Southeast Asian militant Muslim network Jemaah Islamiah.

Samudra was arrested at the Merak port in the province of Banten, 100 km from the capital Jakarta. Bachtiar said he was caught inside a bus that was about to enter a ferry at the western Java port for the adjacent island of Sumatra.

Two other men, identified as Rauf and Yadi, were caught on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively in a village in Banten but Bachtiar did not elaborate on their links to Samudra.

Another police official said the two were Samudra's bodyguards.

On Sunday, police identified Samudra, who is from West Java, as the top planner in the group that carried out the attacks.

Investigators have said Samudra was the one who initiated and chaired meetings on planting the bombs since the first one took place in the central Java city of Solo. In one of the several meetings in various areas on Java and Bali, he decided to plant the bombs on the resort island, they said.

But it is unclear whether he was a lone player or receiving instructions from someone else.

Police have said there was no evidence yet the attacks were the work of Jemaah Islamiah, a Southeast Asian militant Muslim network linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda.

Indonesia's Defence Minister Matori Abdul Djalil as well as various foreign officials and intelligence sources have blamed the bombings on Jemaah and al Qaeda.

Police think Samudra learned how to make bombs during visits to Afghanistan and say he is also a suspect in Christmas Eve 2000 bombings in several churches in the capital Jakarta and outlying provinces.

Due to the church bombings case, Samudra has long been on the wanted list and local media reported police have been looking for him in Banten for months.

"We have been scouring Banten for months but we never exposed the search. Finally, he appeared and we caught him," said Banten police chief Abdurrachman, speaking on a Jakarta-based radio station, Radio Elshinta.

Police have so far identified seven suspects in the Bali bombings -- the worst since last year's September 11 attacks in New York and Washington -- but only one other suspect, Amrozi, is known to have been arrested.

Authorities have been building the case from revelations from Amrozi, a 40-year old mechanic from East Java caught on November 5.

Police say Amrozi's motive in the attacks was to kill Americans due to hatred of US policies he described as oppressive to Muslims, although in the event the largest number of foreign victims were Australians.

I Made Mangku Pastika, the head of a multinational team of hundreds of officers investigating the blasts on Indonesia's premier tourist island, said earlier on Thursday: "But it's certainly possible in one group there are many interests. One wants this. Another wants that."

- REUTERS

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