Anti—terror police hunting a mastermind of Indonesia’s worst terror attack killed three suspects near Jakarta on Tuesday, the police said. Police were trying to determine whether one of those killed was the alleged terrorist Dulmatin.
One suspect was killed after he shot at the police and two were arrested in a raid on a commercial building southwest of the country’s capital on the main Indonesian island of Java, police spokesman Maj. Gen. Edward Aritonang, said. Police later shot and killed two suspects on a motorcycle, Maj. Gen. Aritonang said. Both had been fleeing police and one was firing a gun.
Local media and two Indonesian authorities who did not want to be named said that the first suspect killed was believed to be Dulmatin, a suspected mastermind behind the Bali bombings that killed 202 people in 2002 in the worst terror attack to occur on Indonesian soil. Dulmatin, an electronics specialist with training in al—Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, was thought to have fled to the Philippines.
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However, Maj. Gen. Aritonang said authorities were still trying to determine the identity of the suspect.
“We will announce who he is as soon as police identify him,” Maj. Gen. Aritonang said.
Maj. Gen. Aritonang said the raids were based on information gleaned from 20 suspects arrested in Java and Aceh since February 22 in a police crackdown on a suspected Jemaah Islamiyah cell in Aceh. The JI is a regional offshoot of the al—Qaeda terror group.
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A government source told the AP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press that the suspects captured in Aceh had provided police with information about Dulmatin’s whereabouts.
News portal detik.com quoted anti—terror police chief Brig. Gen. Tito Karnavian, as saying suspects targeted in the first raid had sent alleged militants to Aceh.