Indonesia police to test DNA of slain militant to confirm identity

JAKARTA, Aug. 8 Kyodo -

Indonesian police said Saturday they will use DNA testing to confirm whether a
militant shot dead during a raid in Central Java Province is most-wanted
terrorist Noordin Mohammad Top, linked to a series of bombings in the country.
''We don't dare to mention who the person is because we have to compare his DNA
with his family members,'' National Police Chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri said.
''If the family says the person (shot dead) is really Noordin Mohammad Top, we
will compare his DNA...then we will announce who the person is,'' he said.
TV networks showed video footage of a standoff that lasted more than 16 hours
between counterterrorism police and a group of unidentified men holed up in a
house believed to be Top's hideout in Beji, a village near the town of
Temanggung. A firefight had been ongoing there since Friday afternoon.
According to police, evidence gathered from the July 17 suicide bombings at
Jakarta's J.W. Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels pointed to Top as the
mastermind of those attacks that killed nine people, including two suicide
bombers, and injured 53.
Separately, in Bekasi in suburban Jakarta, another counterterrorism police
squad raided a house in a housing complex at 1 a.m. Saturday and killed two
suspected militants who police identified as Air Setiawan and Eko Gepeng.
''We shot them to death because they were carrying two bombs in their hands,''
National Police Chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri told a press conference at the
scene.
''They were preparing for another bomb attack within two weeks after Aug. 1,
the target of which was the president's residence, which is only 12 minutes
away (by car),'' he said referring to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's
private residence in the Cikeas district near Jakarta.
Danuri said that Yudhoyono was targeted by the terrorists because they held the
president responsible for the executions last year of three militants convicted
of involvement in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, mostly Western
tourists.
From the house in Bekasi, police confiscated a 100-kilogram bomb, three
Tupperware lunchboxes -- often used by terrorists in Indonesia to put bombs in
-- and a car prepared for use as a car bomb. A booby trap was also found inside
the house.
The discovery forced police to evacuate residents in the housing complex where
the house is located.
During the Bekasi raid, police arrested three men, including Amir Abdilah, who
was registered as the occupant of a room at the Marriott in which an unexploded
bomb was found after the blast. Two others, suspected to be Top's bodyguards,
were arrested during the Temanggung raid.
Top is connected to the al-Qaida-linked Southeast Asian terrorist network
Jemaah Islamiyah, which has carried out a series of bomb attacks since late
2000. He has also set up his own group called ''al-Qaida for the Malay
Archipelago.''
Top, along with fellow Malaysian Azahari bin Husin, who was killed in a
shootout with police in East Java Province in 2005, is suspected of
masterminding several terror attacks in Southeast Asia, including the 2002 Bali
bombings.
Top is known for recruiting suicide bombers. He is a close associate of Jemaah
Islamiyah's former operational chief, Indonesian Riduan Isamuddin, popularly
known as Hambali, who was captured in Thailand in 2003 and is now in detention
at Guantanamo Bay.
Meanwhile, police identified the two suicide bombers who blew themselves up
during last month's hotel bombings in Jakarta as Danny Dwi Permana, 19, the
suicide bomber at the Marriott, and Nana Maulana, 28, the suicide bomber at the
Ritz-Carlton.
Danuri said the hunt for other terrorists linked with the two hotels bombings
are still continuing.
==Kyodo