An Indonesian senior anti-terror official Saturday connected the fugitive Malaysian-born extremist Noordin M Top to Friday’s suicide bombings at the JW Marriott hotel and the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Jakarta, according to the national Antara news agency.

Indonesian police officers are seen through broken glass at the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Jakarta July 18, 2009.

“From the modus operandi used in Friday’s bombings, it is clear they are linked to Noordin M Top,” said Ansyaad Mbai, head of the anti-terror desk at Indonesia’s Coordinating Ministry for Political, Legal and Security Affairs.

He said that the crimes were carried out in a more sophisticated way, which was infiltrating into the target area.

“The perpetrators dodged a tight security system and came very close to their target,” he said, adding that it was more sophisticated to infiltrate into the target area than conducting the bombings outside as the one in JW Marriott in 2003.

In that case, Mbai said that Noordin M Top and his network cells were still strong, and it should be the priority to arrest Noordin M Top.

“As long as the actor is still at large, all anticipative measures will be useless,” he said.

The Marriot bombing in 2003 killed 12 people and injure 147 others. It was believed to have been masterminded by Azhari Husin and Noordin M Top, both Malaysian nationals. Azhari was killed in a police raid in East Java in November 2005 but Noording M Top is still at large.

Azhari and his associate Noordin Mohammad Top, a terror coordinator of the Al-Qaida-linked Southeast Asian branch of the Jemaah Islamiyah militant network, are believed to have masterminded a series of major terrorist acts in Indonesia, including the Bali bombings in 2002, the JW Marriot hotel explosions in Jakarta in 2003, a deadly blast at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta in 2004, and bombings in Bali in October 2005 that killed more than 220 people.

VietNamNet/Xinhuanet