Bin Laden Material Found at Alleged Bali Mastermind’s House

Indonesian police say they have found books and video discs of speeches by Osama bin Laden in a house rented by the suspected mastermind of last month's Bali bombings.

Police say a laptop computer belonging to Imam Samudra was also found in the West Java house.

The Central Java chief police detective commissioner, Rus Bagyo, says the house was among three police searched in a village three kilometres from a school where the Islamic cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir, taught.

Suicide bomber

Meanwhile, police in Indonesia and Australia have confirmed they are examining the possibility that the first of the Bali bombs was detonated by a suicide bomber.

Police will continue forensic investigations after Samudra named a man he said carried out the Paddy's Bar bombing.

Police will test DNA evidence collected from the West Java home of the man named by Samudra as Iqbal.

Indonesia's chief investigator on the Bali probe, General Made Pastika, says police found an upper body with pieces of fabric blown into the flesh and that the same fabric was found across a wide area around the bar.

Australian Federal Police commissioner Mike Keelty has revealed that Australian police found evidence early on to support the suicide bomb theory and that the forensic evidence from a body still in the Bali morgue also suggests the possibility the Paddy's bomb was a suicide attack.

"There appear to be some components from the bomb with one of the bodies in the mortuary," he said.

"The theory being developed by the forensic scientists that this person was much closer to the bomb than any other person and therefore was either right next to the bomb when it exploded or had the bomb strapped to them."

Commissioner Keelty said at this stage, though, the evidence is not conclusive.

Planning

The Indonesian police say they are also getting a better idea of the thinking that led to the attack.

Indonesia's national police chief, Da'i Bachtiar, has painted a broader picture of the network behind the Bali attack, telling religious figures in Surabaya that Imam Samudra's group included two Singaporeans.

He said the fugitive Jemaah Islamiah leader, Hambali, and a former Indonesian soldier, named Ramli, who was also involved in a wave of bombings two years ago, had linked up with Samudra and that the three leaders had had a meeting of minds that set the course for the bombings.