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The suspected suicide bomber who attacked the Marriott hotel in Jakarta this week was recruited by the al-Qaida linked regional terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, police said Friday.
The statement is the latest indication that Jemaah Islamiyah, the group accused of carrying out last year's deadly nightclub blasts on the island of Bali, was also behind Tuesday's blast, which killed 10 people and injured almost 150.
Two jailed Jemaah Islamiyah members who were shown a photograph of the alleged bomber's face identified him and admitted to having recruited him, said Indonesian chief of detectives Erwin Mappaseng.
The bomber's severed head was found at the site of the attack. The two detainees identified him as Asmar Latin Sami, a 28-year-old man from the island of Sumatra.
"The two Jemaah Islamiyah members recruited Asmar Latin Sani," Mappaseng told reporters. "According to the two and Asmar's brother, they identified the face on the severed head as Asmar, based on a scar on his left temple."
Mappaseng identified the two Jemaah Islamiyah operatives as Sardono Siliwangi and Mohammad Rais. He said the two had been arrested in June and accused of involvement in bombings and robberies on Sumatra, Indonesia's westernmost island.
Officials have already said Jakarta's hotel attack was similar to the Bali blasts, which killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists, on Oct. 2, 2002.
The perpetrators in both attacks used the same kind of explosives and tried to scrape off the identification numbers on the vehicles used. Police also said the Marriott bombers used a mobile phone to set it off -- the same method used on Bali.
The Marriott attack came only days before a key suspect in the Bali bombing, Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, was sentenced to death Thursday in the case's first verdict. Trials are to come for about three dozen others.
(China Daily August 8, 2003)
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