JAKARTA, Sept. 7 (Xinhua) -- The Indonesian police confirmed that perpetrators of the Jan. 27 church bombing in southern Philippine city of Jolo were an Indonesian couple after DNA test.
The retrieved DNA, which was tested under the cooperation of Indonesia and the Philippine police, was convincingly identical with the DNA of their parents in Indonesia, the police spokesman Dedi Prasetyo said on Friday.
"They were certainly Indonesians. Accuracy of DNA test is 90 percent," said Dedi.
He said the husband was identified as Rullie Rian Zeke and the wife as Ulfah Handayani Saleh who were members of Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD) in South Sulawesi province's capital of Makassar.
JAD, an Indonesia's homegrown radical group which pledged allegiance to Islamic State (IS) and banned by Indonesian authorities in August last year, was blamed for series of attacks in churches and business districts in Indonesia that killed scores of civilians.
Having stayed in the Philippines since December 2018, the bomber couple had a record to be deported from Turkey in 2017. They entered the Philippines territory undetected through illegal way, according to the spokesman.
Cited their past records, Dedi said the two had gone through JAD programs that brainwashed them with extreme and radical teaching.
The two explosions in a Jolo church had killed 23 and injured 102 others, according to the police.
