The Sydney Morning Herald, January 24, 2007
Terrorists open new front in Indonesia
Lindsay Murdoch in Jakarta
[PHOTO: Sidney Jones… "this is a dangerous development". Photo: Reuters]
HIGH-RANKING figures in Jemaah Islamiah have opened a new front in their terrorism
campaign on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, where nine of their fighters and a
police officer have been killed in the latest gun battle.
Terrorism experts say dormant Java-based cells of the organisation seem to have
been reactivated by US and Australian-trained anti-terrorist squad attacks on militant
strongholds near the Sulawesi town of Poso, 1700 kilometres east of Jakarta.
They say the violence in Poso this month has caused a dangerous esc! alation of
what radical Islamic militants see as their jihad or war against infidels.
Jemaah Islamiah planned and carried out the two Bali bombings and a string of other
attacks on mainly Western targets in Indonesia that have resulted in hundreds of
deaths since 2002. Scores of militant members of Jemaah Islamiah cells allegedly
opposed to attacks on Western targets such as the Australian embassy in Jakarta
have travelled to Poso to fight.
"This is a dangerous development," Sidney Jones, the Jakarta-based director of the
International Crisis Group, said yesterday.
"The ramifications could well be an energising of the jihadist movement, which in my
opinion had been steadily weakening."
At least two high-ranking and influential JI figures have been killed in Poso this month,
one of them in the battle late on Monday when police killed the nine militants,
captured 18 others a! nd seized a large cache of bombs, weapons and ammunition.
Police killed Rassyah, a prominent group leader, from the Central Java city of Solo, in
a battle in Poso on January 11 that set the stage for more violent clashes in the area.
Rassyah trained in Afghanistan at the same time as Ali Ghufron, alias Mukhlas, one
of three bombers on death row who carried out the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202
people, including 88 Australians.
Rassyah, also known as Abdul Hakim, had been hunted by Indonesian police since
2003, after he organised JI's stashing of a huge cache of ammunition and explosives.
He is thought to have turned up in Poso in 2004. Since then Islamic extremists in the
town have been blamed for sporadic bombings, beheadings, shootings and other
attacks that prompted the Indonesian Government to authorise the US and
Australian-trained anti-terrorist squad crackdown.
Ms Jones said the crisis group would today publish a report detailing Jemaah
Islamiah's links to the Poso violence. It would show that what was happening in Poso
was no longer a local phenomenon, she said.
There was no evidence that the Poso fighting was linked directly to Noordin Top,
South-East Asia's most wanted terrorist, she said.
But she added that this was more worrying because while some of the JI members
going to Poso opposed Top's attacks on Western targets, they believed it legitimate
to fight Indonesian police trying to maintain law in Central Sulawesi.
In Monday's battle police were confronted by an estimated 200 fighters when they
went to a JI hide-out to arrest a terrorist suspect.
Copyright © 2007. The Sydney Morning Herald.
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