Bali Bombs Mastermind Dulmatin Still Alive, General Says

Jakarta Globe, February 09, 2010

Tourists walking by the memorial at the Bali bomb site. (AFP Photo/Sonny Tumbelaka)

The Islamist militant accused of being behind the deadly 2002 Bali bombings is alive and hiding in the southern Philippines despite earlier reports of his death, a senior Philippine military official said on Tuesday.

Dulmatin, a senior member of the regional militant group Jemaah Islamiyah, was not killed in January 2008 as the military initially believed, said Maj. Gen. Juancho Sabban, the head of the Philippine Marine Corps.

“I believe, from what my sources say, he is still in Sulu,” Sabban told reporters, referring to the southern chain of islands that includes Jolo, a hotbed of Islamist militants.

Sabban also said another JI militant, Umar Patek, is believed to be hiding there, sheltered by the Abu Sayyaf, a local Muslim extremist group linked by intelligence agencies to the Al Qaeda network. Both men are thought to have been there since 2003.

Dulmatin, accused of helping JI plan and carry out the Bali bombings that killed 202 people on the resort island, was initially believed to have been killed by the military in the southern Philippines. But DNA tests of the body of the slain man were inconclusive, raising doubts that it was him.

Indonesian National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Edward Aritonang told the Jakarta Globe that police had yet to receive notice from Philippine authorities regarding Dulmatin being alive.

He added that Indonesia has never acknowledged that Dulmatin was dead. In 2008, the National Police was reported to have sent a team to the Philippines to examine the exhumed body, affirming that it was not that of Dulmatin.

The US State Department has offered a $10 million reward for information leading to Dulmatin’s arrest, and $1 million for Patek.

JG, AFP