Suicide bombers snacked before Jakarta attacks
JAKARTA – Two Indonesian suicide bombers lounged and casually snacked in a grass field near luxury Jakarta hotels weeks before they attacked them, videos released by police this week showed.
AAP reported that the footage was pulled from a laptop found in a backpack on regional al-Qaida commander Noordin Top, a Malaysian who was shot dead two weeks ago during a police raid in Central Java.
The video, taken in the last week of June, also shows the men jogging on a road that passes the hotels and trying on clothing to wear on the day of their deaths.
Three weeks later, the men walked into the lounges of the Ritz-Carlton and J.W. Marriott and blew themselves up.
The July 17 explosions killed seven people and wounded more than 50, ending a four-year pause in terrorist attacks in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation.
“This is our target,” one of the bombers, Dani Permana, an 18-year-old high school graduate, says on the video, pointing to the hotels. “This is a very noble way to destroy the enemies of Islam. This is not suicide.”
He detonated explosives inside the J.W. Marriott, where four Westerners were killed.
The second bomber was Nana Maulana, 28. He is seen in the video footage wearing a baseball cap and eating a shrimp cracker as the men sit cross-legged in a grass field in downtown Jakarta. The two hotels are in the background.
“America has to be destroyed. Australia has to be destroyed. Indonesia has to be destroyed,” says a voice, believed to be that of Zuhri.
Ian Jarrett
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