Jakarta – Police said Tuesday they were investigating records kept in a Jakarta mosque on Indonesian Muslims who have fought in Afghanistan, as part of their probe into the deadly Christmas Eve church bombings.
"We are trying to check their records to confirm claims by a suspect that he and his colleague trained and fought in Afghanistan," a senior officer told AFP, requesting anonymity.
"This mosque keeps records of Indonesians who have headed to Afghanistan to train and fight as volunteers there, and those who have returned home.
"When these volunteer fighters return home they are full of pride, and they go and register themselves at this mosque. So this mosque knows who has been trained to use weapons and make explosives," he said.
Police were not ready to believe the Afghan training claim – allegedly made by suspect Dede Mulaydi from his hospital bed – until they had proof, national police spokesman Brigadier General Saleh Saaf said. "We are still 50-50 about it," he told AFP.
Teams of Indonesian investigators were also in Malaysia and Singapore tracing phone numbers that were listed on the cellphone printout of a Bandung-based suspect, Saaf said.
The bombings, which targetted churchyards and priests homes, killed at least 18 people and injured more than 100 across the country.
Mulyadi, 31, was injured when a bomb he and his colleague Yoyo were carrying by motorbike to a church in the West Java town of Pangandaran exploded on Christmas Eve. Yoyo was killed in the premature blast.
Investigators said last week that Mulyadi, hospitalised in the West Java capital of Bandung, told police he and Yoyo had learnt to use weapons and make bombs at a Mujahideen camp in the Afghan city of Jalalabad, and fought as volunteer fighters there between 1990 and 1992.
Saaf said police were not yet drawing any links between the bombings in Indonesia and the bombings in Manila five days later, which Philippines police have blamed on the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
Saaf said police believed Mulyadi and Yoyo were not part of a wider organisation, but "merely individuals who were used by a higher-up group for their bomb-making skills." "They were paid 300,000 rupiah (31 dollars) each by two middle-men, Haji Aceng and Ustad Iqbal," the police spokesman said.
Aceng, a property dealer and owner of a Bandung workshop where bombs also exploded in their makers' hands while being built on Christmas Eve, and Iqbal, a private merchant, were middle-men acting on orders from a "higher-up group," Saaf said.
"Iqbal and Aceng coordinated the operations in West Java, provided the equipment, and determined which places would be blown up," Saaf said. "They tracked down, employed and paid the bomb-makers."
Both men, identified as key suspects, are still on the run. Police were intensifying efforts to capture Iqbal and Aceng, Saaf said, as it was believed they held the key to identifying the bombing masterminds.
"That [mastermind] group could be political, they could be extremist, they could be religious ... we are trying to find out," he said.
Three suspects, including Mulyadi, are under police guard in Bandung hospital, while a fourth suspect, an explosives expert named Fahruji, is being held in Jakarta. Three more suspects, Aceng, Iqbal, and Holis alias Udin, are still being hunted by police.
No group has so far claimed responsibility for the near- simultaneous explosions in eight cities as Christmas Eve masses and services were being held. But police have said they believe the perpetrators belong to a single, well coordinated group.
Final police figures put the number of bombs prepared at 45, of which 21 were defused by police and 24 exploded, in 38 separate places.