October 11, 2005 - 9:50 AM

Indonesian police make first Bali blasts arrest

By Tomi Soetjipto

DENPASAR, Indonesia (Reuters) - Indonesian police have made their first arrest over this month's suicide blasts on the island of Bali, picking up a man believed to have shared a house with one of the bombers, police said on Tuesday.

Three suicide bombers killed 20 people when they strolled into separate restaurants on October 1 and detonated backpacks laden with explosives. Around 150 people were wounded.

"This person is strongly suspected of having links with the Bali blasts," deputy national police spokesman Soenarko Artanto told a news conference in the island's capital, Denpasar.

Artanto said the man, a construction worker identified only by the initials HS, was arrested in the East Java provincial town of Jember on Sunday under the country's anti-terrorism laws. He was brought to the resort island on Monday.

Jember police chief Syafril Nursal said the man once worked at Bali's Jimbaran Beach, where two of the bombings took place.

"He is believed to have once stayed in the same house (on the island) with one of the Bali bombers ... He is being investigated because he left Bali just three days before the bombings," Nursal told Reuters by telephone.

East Java lies adjacent to Bali.

The attacks killed 15 Indonesians, four Australians and one Japanese. They came just days before the third anniversary of the 2002 Bali nightclub blasts that killed 202 people, mainly foreign tourists. That anniversary falls on Wednesday.

Police have questioned 230 people over the latest attacks.

Suspicion has fallen on Jemaah Islamiah or a splinter faction of the shadowy network, seen as the regional arm of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda and blamed for the 2002 blasts and other attacks on Western targets in Indonesia.

One of the three bombers apparently surveyed his target just hours before the October 1 operation, police said.

Besides the two blasts that went off along rows of seaside restaurants on Jimbaran, the other exploded in a steak bar in the nearby tourist hub of Kuta.

"Witnesses saw someone who looked like one of the perpetrators walking near (the Jimbaran target) wearing a black T-shirt and trousers and looking restless," Commissioner Bambang Kuncoko, a spokesman at the national police headquarters, said.

Police have yet to publicly identify any of the bombers.

DEATH ROW BOMBERS MOVED

With the anniversary of the 2002 bombings approaching and in the wake of the latest attacks, ordinary Balinese on the Hindu island are showing growing anger at the impact the violence will again have on their vital tourism industry.

Citing security concerns, police on Tuesday moved three inmates sentenced to death for the 2002 bombings from a prison on Bali to a notorious penal island off Java.

Surrounded by police wearing bullet-proof vests and carrying automatic weapons, death row inmates Imam Samudra, Amrozi and his brother Mukhlas, also known as Ali Gufron, were hustled into armoured vehicles outside the Bali jail.

Protesters outside yelled for them to be executed immediately. Their appeals process has almost been exhausted.

"Amrozi, Imam Samudra and Ali Gufron have been taken to the Batu prison on Nusakambangan island for security reasons. The prison has exceeded its capacity," said I Gede Rata, head of the justice department in Bali.

"The buildings are run-down ... and security is quite weak."

Some 30 militants have been arrested and tried over the 2002 blasts. Execution in Indonesia is carried out by firing squad.

(Additional reporting by Heri Retnowati in Surabaya)