Jakarta: A man already on Indonesia's most
wanted list in connection with a suicide attack five months ago was the bomber who blew himself up in a packed church on Sunday, police said Tuesday.
Ahmad Yosepa Hayat, 31 was sitting among the Bethel Injil Church congregation in central Java's Solo city during a service when he stood up and detonated a bomb strapped to his body, wounding 27 people.
"Fingerprint and DNA tests showed that the bomber is
Hayat," national police spokesman Anton Bachrul Alam told a
press conference. "He is a member of Jemaah Ansharut Tauhid
(JAT) in Cirebon."
JAT was founded by militant spiritual leader Abu Bakar
Bashir, who was jailed in June for 15 years for funding a
terrorist group planning attacks against Westerners and
political leaders.
Hayat, born in Cirebon in western Java, accompanied a
suicide bomber to an attack on a police mosque in that city in
April which injured 30 people, Alam added.
"He wanted to die as a martyr," he said, adding that
Hayat, who had bomb-making expertise, joined the militant
group in 2010.
Police have so far questioned 17 witnesses in connection
with Sunday's attack, Alam said, adding that four suspects linked to Hayat were still at large.
Solo, some 600 kilometres southeast of Jakarta, is
Bashir's home town and his Islamic boarding school Ngruki is
about 10 kilometres from the bombed church.
The police announcement came after a bomb was thrown at a
church but failed to explode in the eastern Indonesian city of
Ambon yesterday night and a second device was found near
another Christian house of worship.
PTI
First Published: Tuesday, September 27, 2011, 15:58