Jakarta Hotel Bombings, July 2009
The Jakarta Hotel Bombings on July 17, 2009, marked a significant act of terrorism in Indonesia, occurring after a four-year hiatus since the last major attacks in 2005. Two suicide bombers targeted the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels, frequented by foreign business guests, resulting in eight fatalities and approximately 50 injuries. The attacks were attributed to Noordin Mohammad Top, a key figure in the Islamist extremist group Jemaah Islamiyah, known for orchestrating prior bombings in Indonesia. Top had evaded capture for years and was identified posthumously following a police raid in September 2009.
This incident underlined a worrying trend toward hotels as prime targets for terrorists, reflecting a shift from previous attacks on embassies and public spaces. Indonesian authorities had intensified their counterterrorism measures in the years leading up to the bombings, resulting in the arrest or death of numerous militants. However, the persistence of radicalism, underscored by the 2009 attacks, raised concerns about the resilience of extremist groups in the region and the effectiveness of counterterrorism strategies. The bombings not only shocked the nation but also posed challenges to Indonesia's image as a stable environment for foreign investment amidst ongoing security threats.
Subject Terms
Jakarta Hotel Bombings, July 2009
Summary: Two suicide bombers struck at luxury hotels patronized by foreign businessmen in Jakarta on July 17, 2009, the first terrorist bombings in Indonesia since 2005. The bombings, which killed eight and injured about 50, were attributed to Noordin Mohammad Top, once a member of a two-man team blamed for a series of deadly bombings in Indonesia from 2002-2005. Top died in a police raid in September 2009, his identity confirmed by a DNA comparison, according to police.
Date: Friday, July 17, 2009, about 7:45 A.M. (00:45 GMT)
Place: Jakarta, Indonesia.
Incident: Suicide bombers detonated two bombs within minutes of one another in Jakarta's JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels. The first bomb went off outside a ground-floor restaurant filled with patrons eating breakfast; the second went off on the second floor of the Ritz-Carlton, located across the street and a few hundred yards from the Marriott. The explosions killed six people at the Marriott and two at the Ritz-Carlton; more than 50, including several foreign businessmen staying in the two hotels, were injured. The facades of both buildings were extensively damaged.
Known or presumed perpetrators: Police found the bodies of the two bombers. Security cameras in both hotels showed men, one thought to be about 17 years old, the other to be in his 40s, wheeling suitcases through lobby areas of the two hotels moments before the explosions. Both bombers were severely mutilated, requiring police to "reconstruct" their faces in an attempt to identify them. Initial comparisons of DNA samples from the bombers did not match samples taken from the mens' homes, leaving their exact identities in doubt a week after the attack. Both bombers were thought to have stayed in Room 1808 at the Marriott since the previous Wednesday and to have made a cash deposit of $1,000 in lieu of a credit card. Investigators said they found an unexploded bomb in a laptop computer, a cell phone, and handwritten notes in the room after the explosions.
Officials speaking off the record were quoted in news reports as saying that the attacks bore hallmarks of an attack planned by Noordin Mohammad Top, a Malaysian who was a member of a two-man team responsible for several previous bombings in Indonesia, including one at the same Marriott hotel in 2003 and on the resort island of Bali in 2002 and again in 2005. The Associated Press quoted a former JI leader (now police informant) Nasir Abbas as saying "I'm 200% sure" this was Noordin's work. Noordin and his partner, Azahari Husin, were operatives of Jemaah Islamiyah, a fundamentalist organization with ties to Al Qaeda. Azahari, considered a master bomb-maker, died in November 2005 in a confrontation with police; Noordin has long been on the Most Wanted lists of both Indonesia and the United States (see separate Background Information Summary in this database). Indonesian police announced that Top had been identified as one of four men killed in a shoot-out in a remote village on the island of Java on September 17, 2009, and that his identity had been confirmed by DNA comparisons. His death brought to an end a long career as a financier and planner of Islamist terrorist attacks in southeast Asia.
Context: The July 2009 explosions were the first terrorist attacks in Indonesia since 2005, when suicide bombers struck, for the second time, on the resort island of Bali. After that attack, the government of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono launched an intense campaign against Jemaah Islamiyah, capturing or killing 200 suspected militants. In November 2008 the government executed three men convicted of participating in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombing blamed on JI (see separate Background Information Summary in this database on the Bali attack). Senior leaders of JI also were arrested, notably JI co-founder Abu Bakar Bashir, a radical Islamist cleric who in 2005 was acquitted of involvement in the Bali nightclub bombings of 2002, as well as the Marriott bombing in 2003. He served a year in jail on charges of criminal conspiracy. He was released in June 2006 and the following December Indonesia's supreme court voided his conspiracy conviction. The suspected master bomber in a string of attacks blamed on JI, Husin Azahari, died in November 2005 after he was cornered by police and detonated a bomb strapped to his body. Noordin, reputed to be a financier of Jemaah Islamiyah and the chief recruiter of suicide bombers, repeatedly eluded police—as recently as a week before the Jakarta attack, when police found bomb materials "identical" to the materials found in the Marriott in the house of Noordin's father-in-law in central Java.
Analysts were divided on the implications for Indonesia of the Jakarta attacks. On one hand, President Yudhoyono was reelected with 62% of the vote just a week earlier, on July 8, 2009, thanks in part to public approval of his campaign against terrorism. At the same time, Yudhoyono's Democratic Party entered coalitions with moderate Islamist parties, suggesting that Indonesians were turning away from the more radical position taken by JI. The presidential election went smoothly, helping Indonesia present a public face as a stable country suitable for foreign investment—a key element in Yudhoyono's economic policy.
On the other, some observers said the government had underestimated the endurance of radical Islamism. Many former JI members had been jailed and then released—but not necessarily rehabilitated, according to this view. One such analyst, Noor Huda Ismail of the International Institute for Peacebuilding in Jakarta, wrote that the risks of attacks had actually increased as the Jemaah Islamiyah had been divided into several smaller groups who did not respond to a central leadership.
The suspected terrorist mastermind Noordin, for example, was reputed to have broken off from the JI leadership in early 2006 over the issue of so-called "soft attacks" that target civilians and to have formed his own organization, Tanzim Qaedat al-Jihad ("Organization for the Base of Jihad").
The Jakarta bombings also underscored a larger trend in the evolution of Islamist terrorists: a shift towards hotels as preferred targets. Eight months earlier, a group of terrorists attacked two hotels in Mumbai, India (among other targets). In September 2008 militants attacked and destroyed a Marriott hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan's capital. Luxury hotels used by foreign businessmen may have replaced foreign embassies as targets, in part because as public businesses they are more vulnerable to attacks by individual suicide bombers and because such attacks may undermine efforts, such as those in Indonesia, to project an image of stability by countries seeking investments.