Police find more explosives in Pasuruan

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Wed, 08/15/2007 1:15 PM

Wahyoe Boediwardhana, The Jakarta Post, Pasuruan

The Greater Malang Police, assisted by the East Java Police, discovered Tuesday hundreds of detonators and dozens of kilograms of explosives in Pasuruan, site of an explosion over the weekend.

Police found a sack of detonators filled with TNT and five kilos of a ""suspicious black powder"".

Police found the sack on the porch of a small mosque in a fishing settlement on Jl. Hang Tuah in Pasuruan, some 20 meters from the house of one of the suspects in the blast, Nadzir, who is still at large.

Police immediately took the powder to Pasuruan Police Station for analysis.

Malang Police chief Sr. Comr. Syahrizal Ahyar said police had discovered 10,822 detonators in the house of Rohmah, Nadzir's grandmother, at around 11:30 p.m. local time Monday.

As many as 6,422 of the detonators had been filled with TNT and were ready for use, while the remaining 4,400 detonators, each 5 cm long and 0.5 cm in diameter, were rolled in aluminum foil.

Police also found 2.5 grams of black powder in Rohmah's house, around 50 meters from Nadzir's. The powder, according to Ahyar, was mixed with TNT to produce a bigger explosion.

The powder is similar to the type used by militants in the Bali bombings in October 2002 that killed 202 people.

Police on Monday also discovered 16 kg of TNT in suspect Ilham's house.

In total, police have seized 45.2 kg of TNT and 12,256 detonators in the area.

Although the explosive materials are not commonly used by civilians, police have not ruled links to terror networks, although they are regarded as unlikely.

""We don't think there is a link with the terror network. From preliminary investigations, there is yet to be any link between the incident in Pasuruan with terrorism,"" said Ahyar.

The explosive materials, found in four locations -- the houses of Rohmah, Ilham and Nadzir and the Baitul Hamid mosque -- were more likely to have been traded as fishing bombs.

Ahyar said the fish bombs were not intended for areas outside Java, such as Maluku, Sulawesi and Kalimantan. He said police were still conducting further investigations and requested more time.

He said he had instructed his men to carry out a thorough investigation and to further examine Nadzir's family members, among them Farida, his sister-in-law, and Iwan, his brother-in-law.

Ahyar said police were expecting to speak to more witnesses and that police members were still looking for Nadzir.

The Malang Police have coordinated with the National Police Headquarters in Jakarta, which will later work with the Indonesian Military (TNI) Headquarters to investigate other TNI institutions in connection with the discovery of standard TNI explosives being used by civilians.

People living in the fishing village where the explosives were found expressed grave concern over the discoveries. Most said they were unaware of the amount of TNT required for a fishing bomb.

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