The Jakarta Post, February 08, 2007
Conflicts in Ambon, Poso similar, says think tank
M. Azis Tunny and Alvin Darlanika Soedarjo, The Jakarta Post, Ambon, Jakarta
The conflicts in Ambon, Maluku and Poso in Central Sulawesi are linked by similar
characteristics and all involve Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) and Mujahidin KOMPAK radical
groups, a think tank said Wednesday.
The Southeast Asia project director of the International Crisis Group (ICG), Sidney
Jones, told The Jakarta Post in Ambon Wednesday that a number of Muslim militants
in Poso were also involved in violence in Maluku from 2003-2005.
Among them, she said, were three police fugitives involved in the 2005 attack on a
Mobile Brigade (Brimob) police post in Lokki, West Seram, Maluku.
The three -- Muklis, Andi and Jodi -- were from the Poso branch of Mujahidin and had
joined the group in Ambon for a training camp on Mount Olas to prepare them for a
holy war.
However, following the arrests of a number of Mujahidin members, the group in Maluku
had been weakened.
"Although some of them stayed in Maluku after marrying local women, they are no
longer involved in radical acts ... I think its activity is almost over," Jones said.
In its report late last month, the group said JI terrorists had been recruiting and
training on Sulawesi island and could turn it into the center for a jihad on the
government.
JI veterans who fought in Afghanistan and the southern Philippines have found fertile
ground among Muslim fighters nursing grievances against Christians in religiously
divided Poso, a focal point of violence between Muslims and Christians that claimed
about 1,000 lives in 2000-2001.
"Many Mujahidin Kompak and JI members received their war training in Ambon. They
then went to Poso, which they see as more fertile ground for conflict than Ambon,"
she said.
In Poso, she said, the situation would get better following the clash last month
between police and militants accused of a series of anti-Christian attacks in Poso.
In the past three years, until the arrest of militant Hasanudin in Poso, police did not
know who was behind the violence in Poso, but it was later disclosed that they came
from the same group.
"In Ambon it was the same, the perpetrators were not apprehended at first. But after
the Lokki incident, it's all in the open and police have become aware of the group and
its composition.
"And there is hope Poso can be safe too, since the militants there were taught by
outsiders. If they're captured, I think the conflict can be contained. In Poso, the
danger lies in an outside group getting in," Jones said.
The JI has been linked to al-Qaeda and blamed for the 2002 Bali bombings and a
series of other attacks across the country.
Meanwhile, 17 men accused of killing two Muslims during the sectarian conflict in
Poso are soon to be tried. The men were transferred Sunday to National Police
Headquarters as police said they wanted to avoid inciting further unrest in Poso.
"They will be tried for murder under the Criminal Code and the Terrorism Law," Central
Sulawesi Police chief Brig. Gen. Badrotin Haiti told AFP.
Six other suspects wanted for attacks on Christians were also transferred to Jakarta
on Sunday.
In Jakarta, National Police spokesman Brig. Gen. Anton Bachrul Alam said Basri, one
of the men captured during the clash, had confessed that a number of "teachers" from
Tanah Runtuh district, who had been trained in Mindanao in the Philippines and
Afghanistan, had spread extremist ideology to the people.
He said they had also distributed firearms.
"According to Basri, the people also learned how to build bombs from the teachers,
whose names are Rian, Hiban, Mahmud, Yahya, Sahal, Rifki and Hasanudin," Anton
said.
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