Indonesian police find weapons cache in bush

KUTA - Indonesian police said last night that they were hunting for two relatives of the chief suspect in last month's Bali bomb blasts after finding a cache of firearms and ammunition in a forest in East Java province.

Police found the weapons early yesterday in six large PVC pipes 7km from the remote East Java village of Tenggulun, home to the suspect Amrozi, who has admitted his involvement in the attacks on neighbouring Bali island.

Major-General I Made Mangku Pastika, head of a multinational team hunting the Bali bombers, said the cache comprised seven guns including two M-16s and 5000 rounds of ammunition. A police source in East Java had said the stash included five M-16s.

"The weapons were buried there by Ali Imron and Ali Fauzi on November 7. Amrozi gave them to these people, whom we are now looking for," Pastika said in reference to the two relatives. Local media have said Imron was Amrozi's brother, and Fauzi a half-brother.

Pastika did not say if the two were linked to the blasts which devastated part of Bali's popular Kuta Beach area on October 12, killing around 180 people, mostly foreign tourists.

Local media reported that a military-like uniform and passport had also been found in the pipes.

The find comes after police said on Monday that Amrozi was a student of detained Indonesian Muslim preacher Abu Bakar Bashir, the alleged spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian militant Islamic group linked to the Bali atrocity.

Also on Monday, police described Bashir as a co-founder in Malaysia of Jemaah Islamiyah. It was the first time Indonesia had tied the cleric to the group, also linked by officials to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

Police have said they had so far found no evidence linking Bashir to the Bali attacks. Police detained him last month over a series of Christian church bombings in Indonesia in 2000 and a plot to kill President Megawati Sukarnoputri.

On Monday, Pastika said the head of a conservative Islamic boarding school in the village, Zakaria, had been released after questioning. Bashir has said Zakaria studied at an Islamic school that he co-founded in the Central Java city of Solo.

Police have said the group of 10 people whom they suspect of carrying out the Bali attacks were all Indonesian. They are believed to be still in Indonesia.

- REUTERS

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