T

wo people — one on a motorcycle, a second on a bicycle — passed by the Indonesian Embassy in Paris shortly before the explosion on March 21, security camera footage shows.

“We have yet to determine the motive behind the explosion close to our embassy in Paris,” Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa told reporters on Friday.

“It was recorded on the CCTV footage,” he added.

Marty said that it would be difficult to identify the people, as the explosion happened at 5 a.m. local time and the pair were wearing helmets.

A French militant, Frederic C. Jean Salvi, was allegedly involved in the bombing, National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) chief Ansyaad Mbai told the Associated Press on Thursday, citing intercepted emails and online chats.

Marty, however, said that he had yet to receive that information. “The investigation is still under way. I cannot give any further comment”.

Separately, contradicting previous government assertions, Ansyaad told The Jakarta Post on Friday that the explosion clearly targeted the embassy and that there were strong indications that the suspect was related to a radical Indonesian Islamic group.

Ansyaad said that Salvi might be linked to Jamaah Islamiyah (JI), the infamous Indonesian terrorist group behind the 2002 Bali bombing that killed more than 300 people.

There were indications showing that a French citizen was involved in JI that were collected after a raid on a terrorist hideout in Bandung, West Java, in 2010, Ansyaad said.

Additional evidence, according to Ansyaad, came from French investigators, who found that radical Islamic groups in Indonesia and France frequently contacted each other via the Internet.

On Salvi’s potential connection to JI, Mbai said: “The BNPT will send a team to confirm and investigate this suspicion.”

Earlier on Friday morning, the National Police confirmed that they were also investigating connections between Indonesian and French militants.

National Police deputy spokesman Sr. Comr. Boy Rafli Amar said that the police were “currently probing the suspected connections”.

Boy said that the French authorities were taking the lead in the bombing investigation, while the National Police was providing support through Interpol. (asa/aml)