WASHINGTON AND JAKARTA, INDONESIA — International suspicion focused on a Malaysian accountant-turned-bomb-maker as the instigator of a pair of hotel blasts in Jakarta on Friday that may signal the reemergence of deadly attacks by Southeast Asian groups affiliated with Al Qaeda, counter-terrorism officials and analysts said.
Noordin Mohammad Top, regarded as the ideological leader of the most violent wing of the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah, drew almost immediate suspicion because of his presumed involvement in attacks from 2002 to 2005 in Indonesia, including bombings in Bali and Jakarta, as well as more recent militant activity, officials said.
The region's first significant attack in four years also generated suspicion about others in the sprawling network of militant cells known collectively as Jemaah Islamiyah, often referred to as JI. They include other top commanders and hard-liners recently released from Southeast Asian prisons, the officials said.
"JI is the only known terrorist organization in Southeast Asia that has the capacity, the network and the know-how to do this," said one senior U.S. law enforcement official who has spent years investigating the group. "They are the only game in town."
Before the attacks, authorities found explosives near an Islamic boarding school -- with ties to a woman believed to be Top's wife -- on the island of Java, which includes Jakarta, the Indonesian capital. The explosives appeared similar to those used in the bombings, according to a second U.S. official, who has been briefed on the Indonesian investigation. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the inquiry.
At least eight people were killed in the attacks Friday on the high-rise JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels, which stand side by side in a fashionable business district of Jakarta frequented by Westerners. More than 50 people were injured in the attacks, including at least eight Americans. The U.S. State Department said no Americans were known to be among those killed.
One day before the blasts, an Australian think tank warned of a possible resurgence of attacks because of competition among extremist factions of Jemaah Islamiyah seeking to establish dominance. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute report detailed a split between militants who support Al Qaeda's strategy of attacking U.S. targets in Muslim countries and moderates who oppose it.
