Indonesia's Police Surprise Cynics in Bali

Dec. 5, 2002 -- He beamed, he chuckled, he waved gamely at a bank of news cameras monitoring his every move through a glass wall — and he sent a chill down the spines of most Australians tuned in to the daily news.

Weeks after the devastating Bali blasts, the Indonesian police — with a little help from Australian, U.S. and British investigators — had nabbed a suspect in the Oct. 12 attack on a Bali nightclub, and they were sparing no effort to let the world know they were on the job.

Amrozi — a 40-year-old Javanese man who, like many Indonesians, goes by one name — was nabbed in East Java on Nov. 6, three weeks after a bomb blast ripped through the Sari Club on Kuta beach, killing nearly 200 people, many of them Australians.

According to the police, Amrozi had admitted to owning the van used to bomb the popular tourist spot and to buying explosives.

And amid mounting international pressure on Indonesia to crack down on the perpetrators of the worst terrorist attack on Indonesian soil, Amrozi was being questioned by police chief D'ai Bachtiar in Bali in full view — but out of earshot — of the international media.

In a glass-walled room, the boyishly handsome Javanese with a mop of soft dark hair framing his chiseled face seemed not the least intimidated by his high-level interrogation as he grinned at journalists and even coaxed broad smiles from the faces of the policemen questioning him.

But for Australians who had lost their loved ones — surfers, vacationers and honeymooners for the most — in the gruesome attack, the public relations display was not amusing.

Amrozi's smirking performance led to a huge outcry as local papers dubbed him "the smiling assassin" and Indonesian police officials were forced to defend the public interrogation.

Report a Missing Chicken, But Watch Your Cow

By all accounts, the Indonesian police have a lot to be defensive about.

"If you report a chicken missing, you are likely to lose your cow," goes a popular Indonesian saying, reflecting the widespread distrust of an institution ridden with corruption, burdened with poor funding and saddled with a reputation for brutality and incompetence.

"The Indonesian police force is probably the most hated institution bar none in the country," says Sidney Jones, Indonesia Program Director of the International Crisis Group. "It has done nothing in the past to lend it credibility among the Indonesian people."

A branch of the Indonesian military during the 32-year rule of Suharto, the police became an independent force after the fall of the Indonesian strongman in 1998. But the initial optimism over the much-awaited separation quickly dwindled when the police force seemed wholly incapable of overcoming its history of brutality and corruption.

Amid widespread domestic fears that Amrozi would be mistreated in detention — in keeping with a popular joke that the Indonesian police could make a corpse confess — many experts say the police felt compelled to show the world, and especially ordinary Indonesians, that their Islamist suspect was being well treated in detention.

No Great Expectations

Given the Indonesian police's reputation and the hard experience of U.S. investigators in their hunt for Osama bin Laden after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, nobody expected the Bali investigation to get anywhere for some time.

But the international community was in for something of a surprise.

Just two weeks after Amrozi's arrest, in a dramatic capture, the police nabbed Imam Samudra — a 35-year-old computer engineer who police describe as the strategist behind the attacks — in the Javanese port of Merak, as he tried to board a ferry for the island of Sumatra.

According to the police, Samudra confessed to holding several meetings with Amrozi and other Islamists before Oct. 12 to strategize and ultimately plan the Bali attack.

A former teacher at a pesantren, or Islamic boarding school, in Malaysia run by the militant Jemaah Islamiah group, whose spiritual leader Abu Bakar Bashir is currently under arrest, Samudra was a big catch in the Indonesian investigative net.

"Imam Samudra is more of what we think of terrorists to be," says William Liddle, a professor of political science at Ohio State University. "He's quiet, he's very secure, he's educated, and he's not talkative like Amrozi."

But although Samudra proved less inclined to brag about his exploits, he began confessing almost immediately — implicating himself and others in at least six earlier church bombings and other terrorist acts across Indonesia in recent years.

Striking Investigative Gold

And just when cynics were predicting a lull after a two-week burst of activity before the authorities could lay their hands on the big fish masterminds of the Bali attack, the police struck investigative gold again this week.

On Wednesday, police announced that Ali Gufron, alias Mukhlas, the brother and austere hero of the more gregarious, less pious Amrozi, was nabbed on Tuesday night near the central Javanese town of Solo.

Mukhlas is believed to be the most senior figure detained so far in connection with the attack. According to the police, the Javanese Islamist has admitted to being a member of the Jemaah Islamiya and to participating in meetings in July and August to plan the Bali blasts.

But investigators believe Mukhlas had taken over the role of operations chief of the Jemaah Islamiah — the shadowy Islamic group which several experts have linked to the Bali blasts and to al Qaeda — from a man known as Hambali, Southeast Asia's most-wanted man and a militant known as "the Osama bin Laden of Southeast Asia" in CIA circles.

An Islamic scholar whose real name is Riduan Isamuddin, Hambali is wanted by the governments of neighboring Malaysia and Singapore in connection with a number of earlier attacks. Experts such as Liddle believe the operations handover could well have taken place since Hambali may have fled the region to escape the growing dragnet to nab him.

So far, the police have arrested 16 men in connection with the bombings, but not all of them have been directly implicated in the Bali attack.

Surprising the Cynics

The loose strings in the investigations are slowly coming together and by most accounts it's not the stitch-up job that cynics thought it would be.

There's little doubt that U.S. and Australian investigation teams on the ground have played a considerable role in the success so far. But that, according to Derek Mitchell of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, does not totally account for the recent breakthroughs.

"The Australians certainly have an intelligence presence in Indonesia and they are quietly, but clearly, on the job," says Mitchell. "But it's up to the Indonesians themselves to take on the key aspects of the investigations. The Australians provide the technical support and analysis. But the groundwork must be done by the Indonesians."

Most experts agree that on that count, the Indonesian police have stood up to the challenge.

"I must say the investigation has been going well and it comes as a welcome surprise," says Liddle. "I think not only has the police done a good job with the investigation, they've also done a good job with the public relations aspect."

‘The Sherlock Holmes of the Investigation’

And when it comes to good public relations, the most visible man in the spotlight has been Maj. Gen. I Made Mangku Pastika, the internationally trained supercop from Bali who has been leading the investigations.

Widely regarded as the star trouble-shooter in the vast archipelago nation, Pastika has handled some of the country's most sensitive policing cases. So, when he was called in from his posting in the troubled Papua province — formerly called Irian Jaya — after the Bali attacks to head the investigations, it came as no surprise to Indonesia-watchers.

"He's the Sherlock Holmes of the investigation," says Liddle. "He's the one directly guiding the investigation."

Jones, a seasoned Indonesia expert who has been very critical of the force, says she is impressed by his track record. "He's a real professional," says Jones. "He has been posted in some of the most sensitive regions, including East Timor and Papua, and by all accounts, he takes pride in what he does."

In a police force whose leaders are notorious for their politicking and penchant for blocking officers pushing for reform, Pastika's reputation as an honest cop is so widely known, that several experts and ordinary Indonesians worry that the devout Balinese Hindu police officer may have to pay the price for his honest policing during a 28-year career.

They certainly have reason to worry.

During a police investigation into the murder last November of Papuan independence leader Theys Eluay, Pastika publicly implicated the Indonesian military's special forces — the Kopassus Army Special Forces — for its involvement in the murder. Several Kopassus members are currently awaiting military court-martial for their alleged involvement in the murder.

Where’s the Army?

The noticeable absence of the powerful Indonesian military in the Bali investigations comes as some experts and members of the Bush administration, such as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, have been calling upon Western governments to work with the military in the global war on terror.

"America needs to invest more resources — economically and through military ties — to deepen its influence in Indonesia," said Rohan Gunaratna, a former investigator at the U.N. Terrorism Prevention Branch and author of Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror, in an earlier interview with ABCNEWS.com.

"For a long time, Australia and America failed to provide the Indonesian military with assistance because of its poor human rights track record in East Timor. But I think it's important to bear in mind that the military can always be relied on to fight the Islamists. In a conflict situation, every military violates human rights, it's a question of the degree of violation."

But given the track record of the police in recent weeks, some experts call for greater cooperation with the police in the war on terror and for leaving the military to deal with Indonesian national security concerns.

"In my opinion, it's much better to deal with the police," says Liddle. "There are certainly some branches such as the army intelligence branch that is concerned with internal security, but this is a job for the police."

But as the hunt for the planners of the Bali bombings reaches its critical stage, with investigators inching toward the upper echelons of Jemaah Islamiya and al Qaeda, the hardest challenge facing the Indonesian police is yet to come. If the police force does rise up to the challenge though, it could be a shot in the arm not only for the tattered reputation of the police force, but also for the global war on terrorism.