Jumat, 05 Oktober 2007

Reports: Maldives police show footage of suspects at park just before bombing


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COLOMBO, Sri Lanka: Maldives police released footage Wednesday of two men — now being held over a park bombing that wounded tourists — apparently checking out the site minutes before the attack.

The bombing Saturday at the Sultan Park in the capital, Male, hurt 12 foreign tourists and shook the Indian Ocean tropical island nation's crucial tourism industry. No one has claimed responsibility.

Assistant Police Chief Abdullah Riyaz told The Associated Press by telephone that police had arrested three more suspects in the blast, bringing the total in custody to 14, four of them foreigners.

He did not release the foreigners' nationalities, though state media had earlier reported two of them were from Bangladesh.

Police were looking for two more men, he said.

The closed-circuit security camera footage showed two men, both now under arrest, arriving at the park together about 10 minutes before the blast, according to the Web site of the Minivan newspaper. It said they went off in separate directions about seven minutes later.

One returned on a motorcycle a minute before the bomb exploded, and he then immediately sped off, the newspaper said.

Authorities in the Sunni Muslim nation of 1,200 islands and 350,000 people have refused to discuss a possible motive, despite claiming that three suspects had confessed.

"It is too early to say whether it is linked to Islamic extremism," Riyaz told a news conference earlier in the day, according to Minivan. "We do not know if foreign groups are involved."

Maldives media have reported that police impounded a motorcycle outside a mosque on the capital island of Male.

Government officials fear the bombing — the first of its kind in the country — could scare off some of the 600,000 foreign tourists who visit each year, accounting for a third of the national economy.

Before the blast, analysts had expressed concerns about the potential for violence in the country amid the growing influence of radical Islamic preachers, who have pushed out the more liberal strain of Islam traditionally practiced in the Maldives.

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