Bali investigators reconstruct crime scene; identification of dead accelerates

BALI, Indonesia (AP) _ Police brought dozens of witnesses back to Bali's blast-cratered nightclub district Friday to reconstruct the events leading up to the bombing that killed at least 191 people.

Friday, October 25th 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

BALI, Indonesia (AP) _ Police brought dozens of witnesses back to Bali's blast-cratered nightclub district Friday to reconstruct the events leading up to the bombing that killed at least 191 people.

Armed officers kept a tight cordon around the area as they took the witnesses through Legian Street at Kuta beach, where two bombs exploded Oct. 12 outside two popular nightclubs, Paddy's and Sari.

``We hope that some witnesses will perhaps remember things they may have forgotten when they return to the crime scene,'' said police spokesman Gen. Edward Aritonang. The process was scheduled to continue Saturday.

A multinational investigative team made up of more than 100 officers from Australia, the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Japan, are working with Indonesian police to determine who launched the attack.

Suspicion has fallen on Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian ally of al-Qaida, but no suspects have been arrested and police have remained tightlipped about their findings. They have questioned more than 100 witnesses.

Police will re-interrogate 10 Pakistanis, Aritonang said. They were questioned when arriving in Bali six weeks ago on a religious mission, and again after the attack. They are not considered suspects, Aritonang said, but he gave no details why they would be questioned again.

In Jakarta, police announced the arrest of a second suspect in a botched grenade attack last month at a house owned by the U.S. Embassy. The grenade killed a man inside the vehicle, and residents chased down and captured the injured driver.

The new suspect, Mohammad Thayib, was captured Thursday in a village in Maluku province, Jakarta police chief Gen. Makbul Padmanegara said. Maluku has been torn in recent years by sectarian fighting between Muslims and Christians.

Though the motives for the attack have been unclear, it prompted the U.S. Embassy to urge the government to crack down on terrorism. Since the Bali bombings, about 350 nonessential American diplomats and dependents have left the country.

The painfully slow process of identifying the dead from the Bali attack, many of whom were burned beyond recognition, accelerated in recent days as forensic specialists amassed more dental and other records from countries believed to have lost citizens.

The Sanglah Hospital in Bali, where the identifications have been processed, says that 184 people died in the attack. Another seven have died in Australia since being evacuated there, the Foreign Ministry in Canberra said.

The remains of 11 more people were identified Friday, including six Australians, two Americans, two Germans and one Swede, bringing the total of confirmed identifications to 67, hospital officials said.

The Americans were Hong Kong-based attorney Jacob C. Young, 34, a former football star at the University of Nebraska who came to Bali for a rugby tournament, and Steven Webster of Huntington Beach, California, who had been celebrating his 41st birthday with a surfing holiday. Their identifications raised the number of confirmed American deaths to four.

The blasts have devastated Bali's tourist industry, one of the few bright spots in Indonesia after years of economic and political turmoil following the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98.

Occupancy at the island's hotels has dropped from 70 percent before the blast to about 10 percent, operators said. Only 768 foreign visitors remained on the island, the tourism office said.

Several foreign governments have urged their citizens to leave Indonesia or avoid traveling there because of the threat of more attacks.

Fears sharpened after two janitors were slightly hurt in a small explosion Thursday at a shopping mall in Bandung, 125 miles southeast of Jakarta. There was no claim of responsibility.

Police described the device _ and two others defused at another mall _ as small and intended to frighten, rather than kill.

International efforts are moving fast to isolate Jemaah Islamiyah, which wants to establish an Islamic state across Indonesia, Malaysia and the southern Philippines.

The U.S. State Department has added the group to its list of terrorist organizations, thus freezing its assets, making it a crime to contribute funds and barring members from travel to the United States.

Britain has banned the group and froze any assets it may have in the country, and Australia says that nearly 50 countries are supporting its campaign to get the U.N. Security Council to declare Jemaah Islamiyah a terrorist organization. Indonesia supports the effort.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer cautioned, however, that the declaration could trigger retaliatory attacks in Indonesia and warned that Australian intelligence fears that the Thai holiday island of Phuket could become a terror target.

Jemaah Islamiyah's spiritual leader, Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, is under custody in his hometown of Solo, about 250 miles east of Jakarta. He has been hospitalized for a week with respiratory problems. Doctors said Friday he may remain for several more days.

Bashir, 64, denies any link to the terrorists. The hospital stay has prevented police from questioning him for alleged involvement in several church bombings two years ago in which 19 people died, and for a plot to assassinate President Megawati Sukarnoputri.