By TOM WRIGHT
JAKARTA -- The suspects in the two deadly bombings here Friday checked into one of the targeted hotels two days earlier and assembled explosives in their room, evading the kind of tight security that has helped convince foreigners it is again safe to do business in Indonesia.
Suicide bombers at the JW Marriott and nearby Ritz-Carlton hotels killed eight people and injured 53, striking at the heart of corporate Indonesia.
The Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott are seen as symbols of the country's new economic strength and growing appeal to foreign investors. They have marble floors and gold-plated columns, and Indonesia's rich and famous dine at their restaurants and hammer out business deals in their lounges, adorned with spacious armchairs and grand pianos. Nearby are some of the city's most expensive restaurants, which often have Ferraris parked outside.
Both hotels have security measures intended to prevent terrorists from driving a car full of explosives toward their lobbies, as Islamist radicals did at the JW Marriott in 2003, killing 12 people. Since Indonesia's last terrorist attack in Bali in 2005, new security measures and a major crackdown on Islamic terrorists by U.S.-trained Indonesian antiterrorism police made Westerners feel more secure.
On Friday, some of Jakarta's best-known Western and Indonesian business figures gathered for a regular 8 a.m. breakfast meeting at the Marriott hosted by Jim Castle, an American who runs CastleAsia, a prominent local consulting firm.
Mr. Castle, who has lived for almost 30 years in Indonesia and regularly appears on cable news shows, was at the Marriott during the 2003 blast. He wasn't injured then, and has expressed a cautious optimism about the country's prospects. Among topics for discussion at the conference: The success of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a former army general who was re-elected a week earlier on a platform of restoring law and order.
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Upstairs, in Room 1808, a number of guests had checked in Wednesday under aliases -- including one similar to the alias of Southeast Asia's most-wanted terrorist suspect. A police spokesman declined to say how many people had checked in or to give their nationalities.
Shortly before 8 a.m. Friday, security video footage showed, a man wearing a cap and pulling a bag on wheels crossed the lobby of the JW Marriott, walking toward the restaurant. A flash followed, and smoke filled the air.
A few minutes later a blast went off at the restaurant of the Ritz-Carlton. Cho Insang, a South Korean who runs a modeling agency and was organizing a fashion show in the hotel in August, was having breakfast when the bomb exploded. He was knocked to the floor, and was able to run out into the lobby. "The room was full of smoke and people panicking," he said. He suffered minor facial injuries.
The lobby areas of both hotels were left a mangled mess of steel and glass, full of damaged furniture and other debris. The sidewalks outside were caked with blood.
The blasts sent workers running into the street, many in their nightclothes or underwear. Local television showed images of mangled and bloodied bodies slumped on the floor. Plumes of smoke from the blasts shrouded the area as the injured were laid out on a nearby square of undeveloped land.
When the dust settled, two well-known expatriate business leaders attending the CastleAsia breakfast were dead: Timothy Mackay, a New Zealander who headed Swiss cement maker Holcim Ltd.'s local operations, and Nathan Verity, an Australian who ran his own Jakarta-based recruitment company.
Authorities didn't release the identities of all of the other six people killed, and it remained unclear whether the suicide bombers were among them
The injured who were at the breakfast included Noke Kiroyan, an Indonesian former chairman of miner Rio Tinto's local operations; Andy Cobham, an American who previously headed cellphone company Motorola Inc. in Indonesia; and David Potter, an executive at Phoenix-based Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc.
Mr. Castle's hearing was affected after the blast but he was in a stable condition, his assistant said.
Authorities later found a third, unexploded bomb in Room 1808. An Indonesian bomb squad detonated the device, the police spokesman said.
The attacks appeared to be the work of highly capable bomb makers, security experts said. The investigation is focusing on Islamist terrorists, primarily, Noordin Mohamed Top, who is considered an expert bomb maker from Jemaah Islamiyah, a local affiliate of al Qaeda.
In a televised address, a visibly angry Mr. Yudhoyono said the bombings were attempts to destabilize the country after the elections. "I'm confident just like when we have uncovered [terrorists] in the past, the perpetrators and those who moved this act of terrorism will be caught and brought to justice," Mr. Yudhoyono said, pausing for seconds at a time to control his emotions.
Write to Tom Wright at tom.wright@wsj.com
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