Terrorism in Indonesia remains a persistent threat despite recent successes in killing or capturing key suspects, an international security group said on Tuesday, pointing to a recently uncovered jihadist network calling itself Al Qaeda Indonesia.
In February, police learned of a new militant group based in Aceh. They have since killed eight members, arrested 48 and are hunting 15 others. Its leader, Dulmatin, was among those killed.
The group was “angry with Jemaah Islamiyah for abandoning jihad and critical of the late Noordin M Top for having no long-term strategy,” said Sidney Jones, of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.
JI is the Al Qaeda-linked terrorist network blamed for bombings in Indonesia and across Southeast Asia in recent years.
Noordin was a Malaysian-born terrorist who split from the group. He was killed in a police raid in Solo in September.
The discovery of the new network suggests the nation’s “intelligence on extremist groups remains weak,” the ICG said. Dulmatin, who died in a shoot-out with police in Tangerang on March 9, had been pursued for his role in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people.
“We don’t believe the coalition really represents Al Qaeda in Indonesia,” Jones told. “There’s no evidence to support their claim.”
After his return to Indonesia from the southern Philippines in 2007, Dulmatin played a key role in the so-called lintas tanzim (cross-organizational project), in which several influential pro-jihad clerics voiced criticism of JI and Noordin’s cell.
They decided to forge a new network, choosing Aceh as a base because of its separatist history, Islamic law and potential allies in the form of hard-line groups already in place there, the ICG said.
But the choice proved a “colossal blunder” because community support failed to materialize and “the experiment ended with police raids in Aceh and Jakarta.”
Although the new network seems to have been snuffed out, the players behind it still exist and new alignments or mutations are likely, the ICG warned.
The report highlights government weaknesses apart from intelligence, such as lax supervision of jailed terrorists and a growing tendency to kill key suspects rather than taking them alive.
It recommended that the government enforce prison regulations, including banning mobile phones and ensuring that religious study groups in jails do not become “vehicles for radicalization of other prisoners.”
It also called for a police assessment of cases where the target was killed instead of arrested.
Known associates of Noordin’s should automatically be considered high-risk detainees, the ICG says, pointing out that several suspects in the July 17 bombings of the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta had assisted Noordin in the car bomb attack on the Australian Embassy in 2004.
The ICG also urged the government to appoint a civilian to lead the counterterrorism body, someone versed in the use of academic studies on extremist movements, to increase its ability to utilize hard data.
In February, police learned of a new militant group based in Aceh. They have since killed eight members, arrested 48 and are hunting 15 others. Its leader, Dulmatin, was among those killed.
The group was “angry with Jemaah Islamiyah for abandoning jihad and critical of the late Noordin M Top for having no long-term strategy,” said Sidney Jones, of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.
JI is the Al Qaeda-linked terrorist network blamed for bombings in Indonesia and across Southeast Asia in recent years.
Noordin was a Malaysian-born terrorist who split from the group. He was killed in a police raid in Solo in September.
The discovery of the new network suggests the nation’s “intelligence on extremist groups remains weak,” the ICG said. Dulmatin, who died in a shoot-out with police in Tangerang on March 9, had been pursued for his role in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people.
“We don’t believe the coalition really represents Al Qaeda in Indonesia,” Jones told. “There’s no evidence to support their claim.”
After his return to Indonesia from the southern Philippines in 2007, Dulmatin played a key role in the so-called lintas tanzim (cross-organizational project), in which several influential pro-jihad clerics voiced criticism of JI and Noordin’s cell.
They decided to forge a new network, choosing Aceh as a base because of its separatist history, Islamic law and potential allies in the form of hard-line groups already in place there, the ICG said.
But the choice proved a “colossal blunder” because community support failed to materialize and “the experiment ended with police raids in Aceh and Jakarta.”
Although the new network seems to have been snuffed out, the players behind it still exist and new alignments or mutations are likely, the ICG warned.
The report highlights government weaknesses apart from intelligence, such as lax supervision of jailed terrorists and a growing tendency to kill key suspects rather than taking them alive.
It recommended that the government enforce prison regulations, including banning mobile phones and ensuring that religious study groups in jails do not become “vehicles for radicalization of other prisoners.”
It also called for a police assessment of cases where the target was killed instead of arrested.
Known associates of Noordin’s should automatically be considered high-risk detainees, the ICG says, pointing out that several suspects in the July 17 bombings of the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta had assisted Noordin in the car bomb attack on the Australian Embassy in 2004.
The ICG also urged the government to appoint a civilian to lead the counterterrorism body, someone versed in the use of academic studies on extremist movements, to increase its ability to utilize hard data.
