Fresh arrests in swoop on Bali bomber's village

Indonesian police swooped on the home village of one of the Bali bombers yesterday, raiding houses and arresting the principal of an Islamic boarding school suspected of links with the terrorist attack.

Police said they were searching for at least two brothers of an Indonesian man, Amrozi, who has confessed to being field commander of the team that planted three bombs at nightclubs in the beach resort of Kuta last month.

Amrozi, 40, a motorcycle mechanic, was arrested on Tuesday in the village of Tenggulun, east Java, and has since provided investigators with a wealth of information. He has led them to an apartment in the Balinese capital, Denpasar, that was used by a cell of up to 10 people, and admitted involvement in a string of bomb attacks in Indonesia.

Police said they were investigating whether Amrozi – like many militant Muslims in South-east Asia – had trained in al-Qa'ida camps in Afghanistan. A police spokesman said he had travelled to Afghanistan, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore.

Several of Amrozi's relatives are suspected of a role in the Bali attack, which has been blamed on Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), a regional extremist network linked with al-Qa'ida.

Police believe the school in Tenggulun, which was founded by Amrozi's family, may have been used as a base for planning. Villagers said Abu Bakar Bashir, JI's spiritual leader, had visited the school and called on Amrozi at home on numerous occasions.

Police also arrested Sylvester Tandean, owner of a Tenggulun shop suspected of selling Amrozi bomb-making chemicals. He was flown to Bali for questioning.

The arrest of Amrozi has given investigators their first major breakthrough since the attack that killed nearly 200 people, mainly tourists, on 12 October. Until then, the investigation had been hindered by a sequence of false leads and mistaken identities.

Amrozi was apparently a leading member of the terrorist cell; he procured the explosives, bought the van used for the main car bomb, helped build the bomb and rented the Denpasar apartment where the attack was plotted.

He has provided police with numerous names, dates and locations, and has also told them that the bombers hoped to kill as many Americans as possible – and were disappointed that most of the foreign victims were Australian.