Indonesian police called on computer hackers yesterday to track down who was behind a Web site claiming responsibility for the July 17 twin suicide bombings that killed seven people in the capital.
The site discovered earlier this week on blogging service blogspot.com claimed the hotel attacks under the name of Malaysian-born extremist Noordin Mohammed Top and a group that called itself “Al-Qaeda Organization Indonesia”.
“The cyber crime team is chasing [who is behind this] ... hopefully, we can track them,” national police spokesman Nanan Soekarna told reporters.
“There are a lot of smart hackers in Indonesia. Come on, try to prove that you can defend your people and country and provide information so we can catch them,” he said.
Police have said they do not know yet if the claim in Indonesian and Arabic is authentic. The entry had been posted on Sunday but was only discovered by the media on Wednesday.
The entry praised two “holy warrior brothers” who blew themselves up at the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in a Jakarta business and diplomatic district.
The attacks were said to be a “martyrdom operation for jihad” and intended as “retribution for the deeds of America and its agents against our Muslim brothers and holy warriors in all corners of the world.”
Police have said that the most likely mastermind behind the attack was Noordin, who heads a violent splinter faction of the regional Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) network and has labeled his operation under a number of names, include al-Qaeda for the Malay Archipelago.
Noordin is suspected of masterminding suicide bombings in Indonesia in 2003, 2004 and 2005, which killed a total of 42 people and injured scores more.
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