INDONESIA: Indonesian police said yesterday the owner of a mini-van used in last month's car-bomb attack in Bali had admitted being a key figure in the group that carried out the atrocity, and had given police plenty of information.
And last night, the al-Qaeda terrorist network said it carried out the bombing, according to CNN. The group said it had attacked "nightclubs and whorehouses in Indonesia" in a website message translated by CNN.com.
In Indonesia, in the first big breakthrough in the multinational inquiry into the October 12th blasts that killed 184 people, national police chief Gen Da'i Bachtiar identified the mini-van owner as Amrozi and said he was on the island at the time of the attacks.
Asked if Amrozi parked the explosives-laden van in front of a nightclub packed with foreign tourists, Gen Bachtiar said: "The group has several people with a division of labour, certainly including Amrozi, who admitted going there and dividing up tasks."
Amrozi is the first suspect named over the three blasts that rocked Bali, presenting President Megawati Sukarnoputri with the biggest challenge of her presidency and appearing to confirm fears that the world's most populous Muslim nation was South-east Asia's weakest link in the war on terrorism.
Gen Bachtiar said Amrozi resembled one of four sketches of possible suspects police have released. He did not say if Amrozi was Indonesian or if he had any links to radical Muslim groups.
"We have gathered lots of information from (Amrozi) but we still have to cross-check it with other evidence," Gen Bachtiar said.
Meanwhile, Australia, which lost some 90 citizens in Bali, brushed aside criticism from Asian neighbours of its treatment of Muslims.