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A deadly car bomb attack on a US-run luxury hotel in Jakarta was recorded on a security camera that showed the vehicle pause in the driveway, and police said they believed they had identified the suicide bomber.
Tuesday's attack, two days before the first Bali bomb trial verdict and after a spate of global terror warnings, killed at least 10 people and wounded 150. Initial suspicions have focused on the shadowy Jemaah Islamiah militant Muslim group.
Indonesian police would seek DNA samples from the family of the suspected bomber to match body parts found at the scene, senior Indonesian police officer Gorris Mere told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio. Mere identified the suspected bomber as Asmal and said police had intercepted an email he sent about six weeks ago in which he used Jemaah Islamiah (JI) code words for taking part in a suicide bombing.
Mere was sending officers to visit the man's parents and would take DNA samples from them to compare with body parts found among the debris at the Marriott Hotel, target of the worst terror attack in Indonesia since the October 2002 Bali bombings.
"We (will) bring it back to compare with the hand found on the crime scene and also with the blood we found on the crime scene," Mere said in a telephone interview from the bomb site.
He said Asmal had expressed a desire "to get married" in an email and that this was a code used by members of JI, linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, when they wanted to be part of a suicide bombings.
"Marry is a...code word of the JI -- I want to plant a bomb, a suicide bomb," Mere said.
Late Wednesday police issued composite sketches of the man who bought the car into which was packed a deadly cocktail of black powder and TNT wedged between jerry cans filled with petrol. A police caption on one sketch described the man as a suspected bomber.
The device used in the Marriott blast resembled those used in other attacks, such as the Bali bombings, that have been blamed on JI, police have said.
In Bali Thursday, a court was to deliver the first verdict in a series of trials of Muslim militants over the Bali attacks, which killed 202 people, many of them Australians.
SIMILARITIES TO BALI BOMB
In an unprecedented move, a self-proclaimed JI operative has claimed responsibility for the Marriott blast, Singapore's Straits Times reported Wednesday.
The Marriott bomb was triggered by a mobile phone, as was at least one of the Bali bombs, police said.
The methods, materials and the detonations all resembled the bombs that destroyed Bali nightclubs and the Jakarta bomb which targeted the Philippine ambassador in August 2000, police said.
In their hunt for the bombers, police had shown a security video from the Marriott's closed circuit television system to members of parliament, Indonesia's leading Tempo newspaper said Thursday.
"Because the car stopped, two security guards approached. Before they had a chance to ask the driver to move on, the bomb exploded," the newspaper quoted Brigadier-General Nanan Sukarna, deputy Jakarta police chief, as saying.
Sukarna said he believed the driver of the vehicle had paused because the video showed the lobby area was fairly quiet.
The video then recorded a fireball heading from the driveway in the direction of the lobby, he said. The driver of the vehicle did not leave the car, Sukarna added.
Police could not be reached to confirm the report.
President Bush, in a telephone call to Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri Wednesday, offered Indonesia any help the United States could provide in tracking down the Jakarta bombers.
One foreigner, a Dutch banker, was among those killed in the attack. Singaporeans, Americans, Australians and several New Zealanders were among the wounded.
(China Daily August 7, 2003)
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