The Jakarta Post, 9/12/2006 11:10:20 AM
Former terrorist leader says Jemaah Islamiyah operative planning
annual attacks
CANBERRA (AP): A former leader of the Southeast Asian terrorist group Jemaah
Islamiyah told Australian radio Tuesday that fugitive bombing strategist Noordin
Mohamad Top has instructed followers to carry out at least one attack a year.
Nasir Abbas, a Malaysian who once led a branch of Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia
before his arrest there in 2003, said Noordin had instructed his followers to form small
cells which could operate without central control.
"I worry about that because what Noordin had mentioned to his followers, that he will
do an operation at least once a year," Abbas, who avoided prosecution by becoming
an Indonesian policeinformer since his arrest, told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
radio.
"It doesn't mean that he'd make a big operation," he added. Malaysia-born Noordin
has been accused of direct involvement in at least four terror attacks in Indonesia: the
2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, most of them foreign tourists;
twobombings in Jakarta in 2003 and 2004 that took at least 22 lives; and the 2005
suicide attacks in Bali that caused 20 more deaths.
All those attacks occurred in the last five months of the year.
Abbas said Noordin was still alive and always thinking of ways to kill people.
Abbas said a new terrorist manual, with instructions on how to form small terrorist
cells, was being circulated among militant groups in Indonesia.
He referred to the new trend toward small, independent cells as uncontrolled
decentralization, but said that the militants had not "weakened their movement." (**)
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