An Indonesian suspected of helping to assemble the Bali nightclub bomb was targeting Americans in revenge for US attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan, police said Monday.
They also described the suspect, Amrozi, as a student of militant Indonesian Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, who is being detained in Jakarta on separate terrorism charges. "He (Amrozi) says America is oppressing Islam ... according to him America attacked Iraq and Afghanistan and America is not fair in the cases of Palestine and Israel," Inspector General I Made Mangku Pastika, head of the Indonesian investigating team, told a press conference, according to AFP.
The arrest of Amrozi at his home village in East Java last week was the first breakthrough in the probe into the blast which killed almost 200 people.
Unveiling more background about Amrozi, police said he learned how to make bombs in Afghanistan. Police have previously said Amrozi and other members of the group of bombers had traveled to Afghanistan.
Sylvester Tendean, the shopkeeper who sold Amrozi more than one ton of chemicals used to make the bomb, has now also been named as a suspect, according to his lawyer Wiyono Sugiyanto.
Pastika added that the group of 10 people whom police suspect of carrying out the Bali attacks were all Indonesian. Police have called them field operators. Pastika said the Bali bombing operation was cheap -- costing the perpetrators around $12,000. (Albawaba.com)
