Indonesian police have arrested 13 more people suspected of involvement in a wave of bombings across the country, a police spokesman said.
The arrests were made following information gained from several of the 10 suspects detained over last month's car bombing at the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta, said Senior Commissioner Zainuri Lubis, a police spokesman.
Nine of the suspects were arrested in Jakarta, two in Lampung in southern Sumatra, and two in the Central Java city of Solo, Lubis said Tuesday. "All 13 suspects are now under questioning here in Jakarta," Lubis said, declining to provide further details.
Another spokesman, Inspector General Basyir Barmawi, was quoted by the Antara state news agency as naming the Jakarta suspects as: Ahmad Sofyan alias Tamin, Zaid, Rofi alias Solihin, Teten, Rachmat, Sukimin alias Babe, Zubair alias Lutfi, Farhan alias Syamsul Bahri and Muhaimin Yahya alias Siad.
Those arrested in Solo were Ikhsan and Suradi alias Abu Usman alias Abu Said while Ari Wibowo alias Mustofa and Awaluddin alias Abu Yasar alias Dani Sitorus were arrested in Lampung, Barmawi said. National police detective chief Erwin Mappaseng told reporters on Tuesday the 13 had held seven meetings in October 2002 and early 2003 to plan terror attacks, and to discuss the future of the families of fellow militants arrested for their roles in the October 12 Bali bombings.
"Some of those meetings discussed plans of new terror attacks but we have not yet obtained information on where they were to be launched," he said.
On Monday Mappaseng said the sessions were held sometime in October and in February in Central Java and at a hill resort not far from Jakarta.
The meetings were chaired by Abu Rusdan, who allegedly replaced Abu Bakar Bashir as the head of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) regional extremist network. Some were also attended by key Bali bombing suspect Mukhlas, Mappaseng said. Rusdan has been in detention since April and Mukhlas is on trial for the Bali blasts.
An Indonesian court early this month sentenced Bashir to four years in prison for participating in a plot to overthrow the government, but ruled he was not the head of JI.
Mappaseng said that one of the Lampung suspects, Ari Wibowo, knew that a bombing was being planned but he did not know then that it turned out to be the Marriott hotel attack.
Another of the arrested suspects, Awaluddin, is believed linked to a bombing in the North Sumatran city of Medan in May 2000 along with three other people acting on the orders of Hambali, an alleged senior leader of JI who is in US custody, Mappaseng said. "The others only participated in the meetings," he said. He said Muhaimin Yahya alias Siad was "the one who had made the preparations for the meetings."
Legislators on Monday questioned Bachtiar about the disappearances of Muslims with links to Afghanistan and the southern Philippines, but he told them that the arrests were not "abductions," Antara reported.
He said under anti-terror legislation passed this year, investigators can detain a terrorism suspect for up to seven days. "We arrested them according to legal procedures. The arrests were made by officers carrying arrest warrants. The officers also informed the families concerned about the arrests," Bachtiar said.
Indonesia has been hit be a series deadly bombings since 1998, including the Bali bombing attacks that killed 202 people and the JW Marriott hotel attack that left 12 people dead on August 5.