Arlina Arshad, Jakarta – Indonesian police Tuesday questioned teachers at an Islamic boarding school amid reports a former student was one of two suicide bombers involved in last week's Jakarta bombings.
A teacher at the school confirmed that police had been questioning staff at the Al-Mukmin school in Ngruki, Central Java, for the past two days following Friday's twin suicide bombings of luxury hotels.
"The police came yesterday and today. It's just ordinary chat. The police checking on us is normal," Al-Mukmin deputy principal Muhammad Sholeh Ibrahim told AFP.
The coordinated blasts at the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in a central Jakarta business district popular with foreigners killed seven people including three Australians, a New Zealander and an Indonesian.
Two other victims remain unidentified, possibly a Dutch couple who were reportedly guests of the Ritz-Carlton and have been missing since Friday. More than 50 people were wounded in the attacks, the worst in Indonesia since 2005.
Police have not confirmed widespread reports in the Indonesian media that a graduate of the Ngruki school – most commonly identified as Nur Hasbi, alias Nurdin Aziz or Nur Sahid – was the Marriott bomber.
Ibrahim said a former student called Nur Said had attended the school and graduated in 1994 along with Asmar Latin Sani, the suicide bomber who detonated a truck bomb outside the Marriott in 2003, killing 12 people.
"He was just like normal students, nothing extraordinary about him. He graduated in 1994 with Asmar," Ibrahim said of Nur Said.
Police and senior counter-terror officials have said the bombings look like the work of Noordin Mohammed Top, one of Asia's most wanted terrorists and the leader of an extreme offshoot of the Jemaah Islamiyah regional terror network.
Malaysia's Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said that based on police intelligence, the Malaysian-born militant was not in Malaysia, the Star daily said on its website.
The Ngruki school was co-founded by Abu Bakar Bashir, the spiritual head of Jemaah Islamiyah which is blamed for dozens of bombings across Indonesia since the late 1990s, including the 2002 Bali blasts which killed 202 people.
The Islamic teacher denied the school was a hatchery for suicide bombers, although it is well-known that several of its graduates have become Jemaah Islamiyah members and helped carry out terror attacks.
"The Ngruki school is an educational institute. We have nothing to do with terrorism and I refute reports saying that," Ibrahim said.
Local media have reported that police had collected DNA samples from Nur Said's family as they try to identify the bombers using remains including a severed head, but this has not been confirmed. "We are still investigating," deputy police spokesman Sulistyo Ishak told reporters Monday.
Police also have not confirmed that the bomber was a man wearing a backpack on his chest and dragging a suitcase who was caught by security cameras entering the Marriott's dining area shortly before the blast.
A security guard reportedly asked him where he was going and the man, who looked Indonesian, replied that he was going to give something to his boss.
New footage from the Marriott which was aired on local television Tuesday appeared to show the same man, wearing a suit coat and baseball cap, passing through the hotel's airport-style security checks with his suitcase. The Marriott has defended its security measures as "very tight".
Police said an unexploded bomb left in a guest room of the Marriott resembled devices used in the 2002 Bali bombings and one discovered in a recent raid on a reported Noordin hideout in Central Java.
A police crackdown – including key arrests and the inducement of militants to defect – has hobbled JI in Indonesia and severed its links to foreign funds in recent years.
But while the network is diminished, analysts say JI has been able to fall back on a tight network of schools and marriages to maintain cohesion and possibly rebuild.