Indonesia awaits DNA proof of suspect militant's ID
JAKARTA (Reuters) - DNA tests on the body of a man shot by Indonesian security forces during a raid targeting Islamic militant Noordin Mohammad Top are to take at least a week as some analysts questioned whether police had got their man.
Malaysian-born Top, 40, is a prime suspect in last month's near simultaneous suicide attacks on Jakarta's JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels which killed nine people and wounded 53.
A militant police believe was Top was shot dead on Saturday after an 18-hour siege by heavily armed members of Indonesia's anti-terrorism unit of a house surrounded by rice and tobacco fields in Central Java.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has vowed to track down the hotel bombers and if Top has been killed it would be major coup for security forces and could reduce the chance of further attacks.
"I think now more than ever we really have to wait and see when the police identify the body," said Sidney Jones, a Jakarta-based expert on Islamist militants at the International Crisis Group. "I don't think anybody has a good idea of who it might be.
Top formed a violent wing of the Jemaah Islamiah militant network and is suspected of masterminding previous bomb attacks on the JW Marriott in Jakarta in 2003, on the Australian Embassy in Jakarta in 2004 and in Bali in 2005.
A police source said authorities had started to seek DNA samples from Top's children, his mother and other relatives.
"The standard process takes about one week at the earliest if we have necessary references," Brigadier General Eddy Saparwoko of Indonesia's disaster victim identification unit told Reuters.
Five suspects were detained in Saturday's raids and two shot dead when police found a cache of bombs and a vehicle primed with explosives in Bekasi near Jakarta.
Police chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri said on Saturday that Top had chaired a meeting on April 30 where a plot was hatched to carry out a suicide attack on the Yudhoyono's residence using a minibus packed with explosives in retaliation for the execution of the Bali bombers last year.
Jones said the cache of bombs found outside Jakarta was important but warned against playing it up too much.
"If he's still alive then I don't think we can say the network has been hugely damaged yet, there's certainly more members out there," she said. "What's worrisome is that they cover a fairly wide geographic area."
The security operations in Indonesia are being closely watched in Australia, which lost 88 citizens in the 2002 bombings on Bali nightclubs and three in last month's Marriott attack.
"It is still unclear as to who precisely has been killed and who has been apprehended," Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told reporters in Canberra, adding he hoped to hold talks with Yudhoyono later in the day.
(Additional reporting by Telly Nathalia, Olivia Rondonuw and Chris McCall in Canberra; Editing by Ed Davies)