Jitters In Jakarta

By Simon Elegant and Jason Tedjasukmana

At a briefing in the dilapidated police headquarters in Jakarta late last month, senior Indonesian police officials announced that Islamic militants would probably soon detonate a bomb in the capital and tacitly acknowledged that they could do little to prevent it. A captured Islamic militant confessed that he had delivered two carloads of bombmaking materials to the capital. And a police raid in the central Java city of Semarang uncovered papers outlining areas of Jakarta earmarked for attack by Jemaah Islamiah (JI), a network allied to al-Qaeda and tied to last year's Bali bombing.

The officials were proved right last week when a car bomb exploded in the driveway of the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta, leaving 10 dead and 150 wounded. Within days, police said they had identified the bomber--by virtue of a severed head recovered from the building. But could more have been done to prevent the attack? A source close to the investigation says four JI suspects arrested in the Semarang raid identified the Marriott as one of many potential targets. Police insist they tightened security around those targets, but Marriott managers say they were left in the dark.

The attack has raised fears of a new wave of bombings in the country with the world's largest Muslim population. Indonesian police believe JI has at least one other cache of explosives in the city. Sources say a suspected JI agent arrested in April confessed that he had delivered 660 lbs. to two senior JI operatives. Early analysis of the composition and design of the Marriott bomb suggests one of those operatives, Malaysian geophysicist and alleged JI bombmeister Azahari Husin, played a key role in the attack. "The momentum is still going for JI," says Mick Keelty, head of the Australian Federal Police, which has joined the investigation of the Marriott bombing. "It's almost as though we've woken a sleeping giant." --By Simon Elegant and Jason Tedjasukmana