School Raided in Bali Probe

Hunting three fugitive brothers who are suspected terrorists, police raided an Islamic boarding school here Saturday where they believe plotters who blew up two nightclubs on the island of Bali last month were based.

Five men connected with the Al-Islam school in this remote East Java village -- two cofounders, the director and two teachers -- are under investigation for their role in the car bombing that killed at least 191 people.

Two alleged members of the purported terrorist cell have been taken into custody. They include a cofounder of the school known as Amrozi who authorities say has admitted playing a key role in the bombing. On Friday, police detained the school director, Zakaria, who like many Indonesians goes by only one name.

Police are searching for the other three, all brothers of Amrozi.

The horror of the Bali bombing was so great that many Indonesians refuse to believe their fellow citizens could have carried it out. But police are finding strong evidence that the perpetrators were home-grown Muslim militants with links to the Al Qaeda terrorist network.

“The headquarters of the plot is the Islamic boarding school we just raided,” said Agung, a police investigator. “There are a lot of suspects here, the planner, the mastermind. They are criminals with religion as their mask.”

Police said the rundown Al-Islam pesantren is affiliated with the Al-Mukmin school in Central Java province founded by Abu Bakar Bashir, a militant cleric. Bashir was taken into custody last month in connection with several terrorist bombings but has not been charged in the Bali blast.

At least three of the alleged Al-Islam cell members were once students at Bashir’s Al-Mukmin pesantren, police and local authorities said.

One of the Al-Mukmin graduates, Amrozi’s youngest brother, Ali Imron, detonated the Bali car bomb, police say.

Bashir is accused of heading the secretive Jemaah Islamiah terrorist group, which has allegedly been responsible for dozens of bombings in Southeast Asia that have killed more than 40 people. Police said the Al-Islam cell was part of the Jemaah Islamiah network, and suspect that Jemaah Islamiah financed the cell’s activities.

Bashir traveled at least twice to the isolated village, where he visited the school and Amrozi’s home. The well-known cleric’s most recent visit was in June, just before Amrozi purchased the white Mitsubishi minivan used in the Bali bombing.

Bashir has admitted visiting the Al-Islam school but denies any part in terrorist activities.

Tenggulun, about a two-hour drive west of the city of Surabaya, is one of the poorest villages in East Java. Most residents support themselves by growing rice and corn. Many of the houses are in need of repair, and cows outnumber cars on the village streets.

Amrozi, who grew up in Tenggulun, is one of 13 children by his father’s two wives. Amrozi and at least three of his seven brothers founded the Al-Islam school in 1993, authorities said. Today, it has about 150 students who come from all over Indonesia.

On Saturday morning, the students could be heard in their classrooms chanting verses from the Koran in Arabic.

Soon after, more than a dozen police mounted the raid, searching for photographs and other evidence that would lead them to the three brothers, who disappeared after Amrozi was arrested Tuesday.

As police armed with automatic rifles stood guard, plainclothes intelligence officers combed through the meager belongings in the tiny, roughly made rooms occupied by Zakaria, the school principal, and several teachers, including Amrozi’s half-brother Ali Fauzi, 35.

In Zakaria’s quarters, a baby slept on a mat on the concrete floor as officers pored over family photos and documents written in Arabic and Indonesian.

Police said Zakaria strongly resembles photos of Southeast Asia’s most wanted terrorist, Hambali, and speculated that they might be the same person. However, the chances seem slim, because Hambali is reported to be constantly on the move while Zakaria has been working at the school for nearly a decade.

In another apartment, police seized photos of faculty members dressed in camouflage gear -- evidence, they said, of the rigorous military training that the students undergo. Several students, however, denied ever receiving military-style training and said the pictures were taken during a camping trip.

In one teacher’s room, police searched through a cabinet adorned with a sticker that read: “I am a Muslim child. I love the truth.”

Police were led to the school earlier in the week by tracing the chassis number of the minivan used in the bombing back to Amrozi, the last registered owner of the vehicle.

Someone had filed off the number before the Oct. 12 blast but left enough of the underlying metal so that Western forensic experts assisting in the investigation could decipher the digits.

Metal shavings that may have come from the chassis were discovered in one of Amrozi’s three workshops in the village, police said. They said they took them to Bali for analysis, along with a rear seat and air conditioner apparently removed from the Mitsubishi before the bombing.

Amrozi has confessed to making the bomb in a house in Bali the week before the blast with chemicals he purchased in East Java, the authorities say.

Police are searching for a friend of Amrozi’s named Harsono, a resident of a nearby village who allegedly drove the minivan from Tenggulun to Bali.

Villagers recall Amrozi as a social, outgoing youth who sometimes got in trouble with the authorities until the early 1990s, when he began traveling to and from neighboring Malaysia.

At the time, Indonesia was ruled by a brutal general, Suharto, and many militant Muslims -- including Bashir and Hambali -- had fled to Malaysia.

It is unclear what Amrozi did there, but police say he confessed that he once traveled to Afghanistan. It is possible that he attended an Al Qaeda training camp there and learned the skills needed to build the Bali car bomb.

At one point, he came back to Tenggulun wearing the robes, cap and beard typical of devout Muslims.

“Once he returned from Malaysia,” recalled neighbor Maftuhin, “he changed 180 degrees.”

Amrozi lived next door to his parents in a house that was surrounded Saturday by yellow police tape. He and his third wife shared a small, sparsely furnished room, sleeping on a thin mat on the floor. In their room were two sewing machines and a small pile of unfinished women’s veils on the floor.

The couple shared the house with Amrozi’s brother Gufron, 42, an Al-Mukmin graduate and one of the cofounders of the Al-Islam school. Authorities said that Gufron once opened an Islamic school in Malaysia but that it was shut down by the government in 1996.

Gufron is wanted by police along with brothers Ali Imron and Ali Fauzi, both teachers at the Al-Islam school.

Police said they are not seeking to arrest two other brothers who cofounded the school.

Before the bombing, Amrozi made a modest living repairing motorcycles and buying and selling cars. Residents said they recalled seeing him in the newly purchased white minivan in the months before the bombing.

“He used it to drive around the village,” said Sartono, 38, a farmer. “I was very surprised when I heard the car was used to bomb Bali.”

Amrozi also repaired cellular phones. Police say the bomb’s detonator may have been made from a cell phone.

Tenggulun is so isolated that there is no mobile phone service, but Amrozi built an antenna in his front yard that enabled him to use his cell phone at home. Police suspect that it allowed him to keep in touch with Jemaah Islamiah leaders.

Neighbors said Amrozi didn’t talk much about religion. Nor did he say that he hated Americans -- although police say that’s the reason he gave them for blowing up the nightclubs.

Family members who remain in the village insisted that Amrozi and his brothers are innocent. They complained that the police have been continually searching their homes, seizing cars, papers, photos and other property.

“I am very depressed because the police are coming to the house every day,” said Alimah, Amrozi’s eldest sister. “They have raided all the family houses. They take everything.”