International eyes search for hidden jigsaw pieces

By Neil Mercer
October 21 2002

Federal agent Steven Hunt peers into the microscope trying to identify fingerprints. It's just one tiny, but perhaps critical, part of the jigsaw puzzle that is the biggest police investigation in Australian history.

Agent Hunt was one of about 17 investigators working yesterday morning in the Australian Federal Police command post. The post has been established in a Bali hotel.

In a rectangular room not much longer than a cricket pitch, laptops line the work areas while maps of Bali and photos of the bomb site are on the walls and boards.

At a long table in the centre of the room, other agents look at statements, discussing and analysing the growing mountain of information and intelligence.

Already, police have identified 450 Australians from whom they will have to take statements,
and that number is growing every day.

The Australian side of the joint investigative team now comprises 105 police and experts, 81 of whom are Australian. There are also four terrorism specialists from New Scotland Yard, three agents from the FBI and forensic experts who were involved in
the investigation of the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

Others come from Japan, France, New Zealand and Germany.

The joint chief investigator, assistant commissioner Graham Ashton, has likened the massive crime scene to a jigsaw puzzle.

"Like with any jigsaw it will have a pattern to it and you want to find the next piece of the pattern," he said .

Yesterday, the members of the team, some in shorts and T-shirts, were busy trying to put it all together.