JAKARTA, Indonesia — When bomb blasts tore through two luxury hotels in Indonesia’s capital where Andi Suhandi worked as a florist, he tried to phone a colleague to make sure he was safe.
There was no answer. Flower arranger Ibrohim Muharram went missing after the twin suicide attacks at the J.W. Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels on July 17, which killed seven people and wounded more than 50 others. Within days, it emerged that he had resigned his job the morning of the bombings.
Police on Wednesday disclosed that Ibrohim — Suhandi’s roommate and friend of three years, whom he described as a “polite” man who used to give flowers to their neighbors on Valentine’s Day — had smuggled in the explosives used in the bombings. He allegedly orchestrated the attacks with Southeast Asia’s most wanted terrorism suspect, Noordin Muhammad Top.
Indonesian counterterrorism forces thought they killed Noordin during a 16-hour siege last weekend, but DNA results released Wednesday yielded an embarrassing finding. The body was not that of Noordin, but Ibrohim, national police spokesman Nanan Sukarna said.
“I can’t imagine a good man like him would . . . attack and kill people with bombs,” Suhandi, 47, told The Associated Press in an interview, still reeling from the news that Ibrohim’s body was recovered from the militant safe house raided in central Java. “Words can’t describe my feelings.”
The bombings, which claimed six foreign victims, shattered a four-year lull in terror attacks in the world’s most populous Muslim nation and showed that militants remain a deadly threat here despite the U.S.-backed arrests of hundreds of insurgent suspects.
Ibrohim, 37, a married father of four children, was “a quiet, polite and friendly man who gave his neighbors flowers on Valentine’s Day” and never openly expressed radical religious beliefs, although he had a collection of books on violent jihad, or holy war, Suhandi said.
The two shared a house in Jakarta with other colleagues for nearly a year, before Ibrohim packed up and left nearly three months ago, saying he was moving to a cheaper location, Suhandi said.
“We never discussed his books, maybe that was because he knew that we had different interests,” Suhandi said.
At least five suspects in the hotel bombings remain at large, including Noordin, while two others have been shot and killed in police raids.
“The investigation is far from over, and there is much left unexplained,” said Jim Della-Giacoma, Southeast Asia project director for the International Crisis Group think tank.
Muharram had resigned his job on the morning of the bombings, said Allan Orlob, head of security of the U.S.-owned J.W. Marriott and Ritz-Carlton. In a letter to his employer, he requested that his last paycheck be used to reimburse several people who had loaned him money. His friends were asked in the short, handwritten note that he left at the hotel reception to forgive him.
