JAKARTA - A Malaysian professor who built the bombs used in last year's devastating attack on Bali headed a 16-strong group which blasted a Jakarta hotel this month, Indonesia's detective chief said today.

Erwin Mappaseng said Azahari Husin is though both to have led the group and to have built the van bomb which killed 12 people and injured almost 150 at the Marriott hotel on Aug 5.

He confirmed that the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) terror network, believed linked to al-Qaeda, carried out the hotel attack. It is also blamed for the Bali attack which killed 202 people last October and a string of other bombings.