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Bom di Ritz Carlton & JW Marriott Sebelum Ubah Target, Pelaku Bom Diduga Targetkan Pemain MU
Jakarta - Saat menyewa kamar 1808 hotel Marriott, pelaku bom membayar deposit sebesar US$ 1.400. Pelaku bom menyewa kamar sejak 15 Juli 2009. Kemungkinan besar, pelaku ingin menjadikan para pemain Manchester United (MU) sebagai target. Namun, targetnya diubah ketika melihat ada jadwal pertemuan para pengusaha internasional.Pada 17 Juli 2009, beberapa jam setelah ledakan bom, tersiar informasi bahwa pelaku bom sudah berada di kamar 1808 selama seminggu. Namun, informasi yang lebih valid disampaikan Kapolri Jenderal Pol Bambang Hendarso Danuri, para pelaku bom sebenarnya baru menginap di hotel bintang lima itu pada 15 Juli 2009, dua hari sebelum ledakan bom terjadi.
Informasi ini kemudian berkembang. Sumber-sumber di Marriott membenarkan bahwa pelaku menyewa kamar 1808 pada 15 Juli 2009 dengan membayar deposit US$ 1.400.
"Mereka berencana menginap selama seminggu dengan membayar deposit US$ 1.400," kata sumber detikcom.
Pelaku menggunakan nama Nurdin Aziz dengan bukti diri KTP yang dikeluarkan Kelurahan Pondok Pinang, Kecamatan Kebayoran Lama, Jakarta Selatan.
Dengan rencana menginap selama seminggu, sangat mungkin mereka menjadikan pemain MU sebagai target bom. Rencananya, pemain MU akan menginap di Hotel Ritz Carlton yang terletak bersebelahan dengan Marriott pada 18 Juli 2009. Para pemain MU akan berada di hotel itu hingga 21 Juli 2009.
"Dengan melihat masa sewa kamar, sangat mungkin para pelaku ingin menargetkan ledakan bom untuk para pemain MU. Mereka berada di Marriott sejak 15 Juli untuk melakukan survei-survei terlebih dulu, termasuk mencari tahu terowongan bawah tanah yang menghubungkan Marriott dengan Ritz Carlton," kata sumber itu.
Mengapa para pelaku tidak menginap di Ritz Carlton saja? Kamar-kamar di hotel Ritz Carlton kabarnya sudah dikosongkan sejak jauh-jauh hari. Ini bagian sterilisasi Ritz Carlton sebelum para pemain MU datang. Lagi pula, pengamanan di Ritz Carlton sudah sangat ketat.
Namun, sepertinya para pelaku bom mengubah target di tengah jalan. Baru menginap selama dua hari, pelaku bom diduga mempercepat ledakan bom setelah mengetahui ada agenda CEO Meeting di JW Lounge. CEO Meeting bertajuk Indonesia Country Program (ICP) itu dihadiri para CEO, direktur, dan manajer dari perusahaan-perusahaan asing ternama.
"Mungkin melihat pertemuan yang dihadiri banyak pengusaha penting itu, para pelaku mengubah targetnya. Apalagi di acara itu hadir para pengusaha dari Amerika dan Australia," kata dia.
Namun, cerita ini bukan satu-satunya informasi yang muncul. Informasi yang beredar lainnya, para pelaku bom sebenarnya memang ingin menjadikan pemain MU sebagai target. Namun, pelaku hanya bisa menyewa kamar 1808 selama tiga hari, yaitu tanggal 15, 16, dan 17 Juli 2009.
"Karena kamar di Marriott hanya kosong untuk tiga hari, maka pelaku bom bisa saja mengubah targetnya pada 17 Juli 2009. Untuk long weekend semua kamar sudah penuh," kata dia.
Informasi ini bisa jadi benar. Karena untuk long weekend, apalagi ada event kunjungan MU ke Indonesia, peminat kamar di Marriott membludak.
Tentu, cerita-cerita yang disampaikan sumber-sumber ini belum tentu benar. Informasi ini juga belum terkonfirmasi oleh polisi. Aparat kepolisian masih menyembunyikan hasil penyelidikannya dan baru akan membeberkan hasil investigasinya setelah semua selesai dan benar-benar jelas.
Mengenai pelaku peledakan, polisi juga mau belum mau membuka informasi lebih lebar, meski Kapolri sempat menyebut inisial N. Namun, informasi yang berkembang luas, N yang dimaksud adalah Nurdin Aziz alias Nur Sahid alias Nur Said alias Nur Hasbi, seseorang yang diduga anggota jaringan Noordin M Top.
(asy/nwk)
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Iranian Critic Quotes Khomeini Principles (WASHINGTON)
July 19, 2009
Iranian Critic Quotes Khomeini Principles
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
WASHINGTON — During his decades in Iranian politics, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has been praised as a pragmatist, criticized as spineless, accused of corruption and dismissed as a has-been.
Now, in assailing the government’s handling of last month’s disputed presidential election, Mr. Rafsanjani, a 75-year-old cleric and former president, has cast himself in a new light: as a player with the authority to interpret the ideals of Iran’s 30-year-old Islamic republic.
Using his perch as a designated prayer leader on Friday to deliver the speech of a lifetime, Mr. Rafsanjani abandoned his customary caution to demand that the government release those arrested in recent weeks, ease restrictions on the media and eradicate the “doubt” the Iranian people have about the election result. And he implicitly challenged the authority of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to make decisions without seeking consensus.
Behind the words was the assertion that for the Islamic republic to survive, it must restore its legitimacy, reaffirm its republican institutions and find a formula for governing.
To establish his own legitimacy, Mr. Rafsanjani evoked his long political history.
“What you are hearing now is from a person who has been with the revolution second by second from the very beginning of the struggle,” he said, adding, “We are talking about 60 years ago up until today.”
He recalled that his mentor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of the 1979 revolution, said that the “people’s will” must be done, and in this case, he said, the trust of the people had been broken.
Mr. Rafsanjani was a supporter of the opposition candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, during the campaign, and by speaking out on Friday he seemed to be moving closer to Mr. Moussavi as a public symbol of opposition. But Mr. Rafsanjani also took care not to directly dispute the government’s declaration that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won the election.
In delivering his sermon, Mr. Rafsanjani was defying a government campaign to silence him, in which senior officials have interspersed personal attacks with veiled threats. That campaign continued Saturday, when conservative figures criticized his speech.
He was also essentially usurping the institutional role of Ayatollah Khamenei.
“This was a speech Khamenei should have given,” said Farideh Farhi, a political scientist at the University of Hawaii. “That’s his designated role as the spiritual and political guide, to be above the fray. But Khamenei is probably too insecure and has too much to lose. He took sides. Rafsanjani rose to the occasion.”
Still, it would be wrong to say that Mr. Rafsanjani has suddenly become a proponent of justice, human rights and freedom.
In the summer of 1999, after all, when the government crushed student demonstrations at Tehran University, he delivered a harsh sermon in the same place as he did on Friday. Back then, he blamed “enemies of the revolution” and “sources outside the country” for the unrest. He praised the use of force by the state.
During much of his earlier eight-year presidency, many Iranians were executed, including political dissidents, drug offenders, Communists, Kurds, Bahais, even clerics.
Politically, Mr. Rafsanjani was humiliated twice: in 2000 when he ran for Parliament and came in 30th and last place in Tehran (amid charges of ballot fraud in his favor), and again in 2005, when he performed dismally in his bid to regain the presidency.
But unlike many political figures, and certainly unlike most clerics, Mr. Rafsanjani is the consummate politician. He refuses to abandon the political battlefield in a country in which silence in the face of defeat is the norm.
He also knows how to shift gears. A campaign photograph in the 2000 campaign showed him without his turban. He must have thought that a clerical uniform had become a liability.
Mr. Rafsanjani’s bold public stance is not without risks. Members of his family have been briefly detained during this period of turmoil, and the government could use his record, and his family’s financial dealings, to discredit him.
For his part, Ayatollah Khamenei delivered his own notable sermon four weeks ago, in which he embraced the victory of Mr. Ahmadinejad, called the election proof of the people’s trust in the system and threatened more violence if demonstrations continued.
Mr. Rafsanjani struggled to woo the center; the ayatollah stuck to his base of support on the right.
Mr. Rafsanjani spoke about the Prophet Muhammad’s style of governing in Medina, with its emphasis on listening to the people, and treating them with respect and “Islamic kindness.”
He used a pragmatic argument in calling for the release of those who have been arrested.
“Let’s not allow our enemies to reprimand and laugh at us and hatch plots against us just because a few certain people are in prison,” Mr. Rafsanjani said.
Ayatollah Khamenei, by contrast, in his sermon railed about the enemies of the prophet and the foreign enemies both inside and outside Iran. “The violators,” as he called them, are “the ill-wishers, mercenaries and agents of the Western intelligence services and the Zionists.”
Ironically, his speech sounded much like the one Mr. Rafsanjani gave after the disturbances a decade ago.
From the early days of the revolution, Mr. Rafsanjani has favored pragmatism over religious absolutism.
After the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979, Iran’s leaders demanded the return of the exiled Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi as a condition of the release of the 52 American hostages. Mr. Rafsanjani had a better idea: “If the shah dies, that would help,” he said to this reporter in an interview in 1980. (Shortly afterward, the shah died of complications caused by cancer.)
In 1986, after the Reagan administration’s secret American arms sales to Iran were disclosed, Mr. Rafsanjani, then the speaker of Parliament, used his Friday sermon to explain why. He said Iran needed to acquire weapons to fight Iraq, even if it meant dealing with the enemy, the United States. Later, he was credited with helping to persuade Ayatollah Khomeini to end the eight-year war.
A state-builder, Mr. Rafsanjani even set aside religion to rehabilitate the image of Persepolis, the site of the 2,500-year-old Persian empire, saying, “Our people must know that they are not without a history.”
This time, he did not lay out goals. He did not say whether he hoped to get the election results overturned or merely to convince the country to make peace with those results.
“He doesn’t address the basic problem for the opposition: that they have been dealt with brutally on the streets and that this was a manipulated election,” said Shaul Bakhash, professor of Middle Eastern history at George Mason University.
In his 1963 book about miracles, Mr. Rafsanjani bragged that he was saved from an assassin’s bullet because of his “revolutionary speed” and his willingness to “punch those who say nonsense.”
Given the fluid nature of Iranian politics, it would be foolish to predict whether he can make miracles today.
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Militants Eyed in Indonesian Bombings
July 18, 2009
Militants Eyed in Indonesian Bombings
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
JAKARTA, Indonesia - The nearly simultaneous suicide bomb attacks at two American hotels on Friday showed that Islamic terrorist groups, though significantly weakened in Indonesia in recent years, still had the means to mount deadly assaults in one of the most heavily secured areas here in Indonesia's capital.
Indonesian officials said it was too early to identify those behind the attacks at the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels, which killed eight people and wounded at least 50. But they appeared to be focusing on domestic militants, possibly individuals or splinter groups loosely tied to Jemaah Islamiyah, the Southeast Asian terrorist network linked to Al Qaeda.
The attacks were a blow to the Indonesian government, which had been credited with cracking down on Jemaah Islamiyah and for keeping Indonesia free of terrorist attacks since late 2005. The explosions took place nine days after President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was overwhelmingly re-elected to a second term, riding a wave of popularity for fighting corruption and restoring a measure of stability.
Mr. Yudhoyono said at a news conference that the "bombings were perpetrated by terrorist groups," but that he could not say whether "these groups are the same ones" behind previous attacks. He said the attacks may have been linked to the electoral campaign, during which threats were made against him.
Jemaah Islamiyah led several attacks against Western-linked sites in Indonesia this decade, including one in 2003 against the same Marriott that was struck Friday. A bombing at a nightclub in Bali killed 202 people in 2002; two years later, a car bomb at the Australian Embassy here killed 9 people.
Many of Jemaah Islamiyah's leaders and foot soldiers have been arrested or executed in recent years, not only in Indonesia, but also in other Southeast Asian countries. But one leader, Noordin Muhammad Top, a Malaysian-born extremist said to be leading a splinter group, remains free and is believed to be in Indonesia.
A senior Indonesian counterterrorism official said that although Jemaah Islamiyah was no longer the force it once was, small groups of militants, some with ties to Mr. Noordin, still operated inside the country. Some had been arrested in the last month, most recently in Cilacap in Central Java, he said.
"They're not linked in a hierarchical way with J. I.," the official said of Jemaah Islamiyah, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the news media. "But they exchange information and expertise. They all maintain the same belief: that there should be an Islamic state with Shariah law in Indonesia."
Some experts said that the Indonesian authorities had underestimated the resilience of Islamic militants, regardless of whether they were officially linked with Jemaah Islamiyah.
In an opinion article published, by coincidence, on Friday in the newspaper The Australian, Noor Huda Ismail, executive director of the International Institute for Peacebuilding in Jakarta, a private organization focusing on security issues, warned that the Indonesian authorities were growing complacent.
Writing with an official at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Mr. Noor said the splintering of Jemaah Islamiyah's leadership, as well as the recent release from prison of former members who had not been properly rehabilitated, had increased the risk of attacks.
In an interview, Mr. Noor said: "At this point, we can't say who was behind today's attacks. But we can say that there was a new pattern today. Before, attacks were carried out by cars containing explosive materials. Today, they attacked from inside the hotels. The terrorists have become more efficient and sophisticated. "
In 2003, a car exploded outside the Marriott here, killing 12 people. Since then, most luxury hotels in Jakarta have erected barricades; guards stationed at hotel entrances typically check inside and underneath cars, while guests usually go through metal detectors. The Marriott and Ritz-Carlton, in a relatively quiet neighborhood of luxury hotels, apartment buildings and embassies, were considered among the safest hotels.
But the suspects behind Friday's attacks registered as guests at the Marriott on Wednesday, occupying Room 1808, where a bomb was found and defused after the morning explosions, Indonesian officials said. The authorities said they had located the bodies of the two suicide bombers but had not identified them yet.
Six people were killed at the Marriott, and two at the Ritz-Carlton, officials said. At least one foreigner, Timothy David Mackay, 62, a New Zealander who was the chief executive of a cement and concrete maker, Holcim Indonesia, was among the dead. Eight Americans were among the more than 50 wounded, officials said.
The first bomb exploded at 7:45 a.m. inside the Marriott's lobby, near a ground-floor restaurant called Syailendra. Images from security cameras showed a man wearing a cap and wheeling a small suitcase before detonating what Widodo Adi Sucipto, the security minister, described as "high explosives,"
Ikrar Nusa Bhakti, who was staying on the ninth floor of the Marriott with his two daughters, said: "The explosion was really hard. The floor was shaking. I knew it was a bomb, especially after I opened the curtains and saw thick black smoke coming up."
Mr. Ikrar said that after he and his daughters rode a packed elevator down to the ground floor, they entered a dark lobby filled with smoke.
"I saw people coming out from the Syailendra restaurant, bleeding, tottering, their clothes torn," he said.
Two minutes after the first blast, an explosion ripped through a second-floor restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton, a few hundred yards away across the street.
Alex Asmasubrata, 59, said he was jogging past the Marriott when the first explosion happened.
"I continued jogging, but when I reached the Ritz-Carlton, there was another explosion," Mr. Asmasubrata recalled.
He returned to the Marriott, where hotel workers were carrying out the dead and wounded, he said.
"Another man was tapping his mobile phone" while lying on the ground, Mr. Asmasubrata said. "He was maybe around 50. He was badly injured, too. Maybe he was informing his family."
Muktita Suhartono contributed reporting.
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