International Herald Tribune, Friday, October 14, 2005
Jakarta ponders ban on militant Islamic groups
By Raymond Bonner The New York Times
JAKARTA The recent Bali bombings have brought to the fore here an issue similar to
one raised in Britain after the London bombings: whether to ban militant Islamic
organizations.
The group in question is Jemaah Islamiyah, which has been declared a terrorist
organization by the United States, Australia and the United Nations.
Australia, which probably has a bigger stake in Indonesia's counterterrorism effort
than any other foreign country, supports a ban. More than 80 Australians were killed
in the first Bali bombings, in 2002, and the Australian Embassy in Jakarta was the
target of a suicide bomber last year. Jemaah Islamiyah was behind the attacks,
Australian and American officials have said.
Australia is also pushing Indonesia to adopt new laws that would allow the police to
detain and question terrorism suspects longer without bringing charges. Singapore
and Malaysia have Internal Security Acts, which allow detentions of up to two years,
but similar laws have been resisted here because they have the flavor of the Suharto
dictatorship. The government is now considering adopting the tougher laws.
The Bush administration agrees that the group should be banned, but in the past year
Washington has adopted a low profile on the issue, aware that Indonesia at times
resents outside interference.
In the investigation of the attacks in Bali on Oct. 1, which killed 19 diners at three
restaurants, most of them Indonesians, the police have not arrested anyone, nor have
they positively identified any of the three suicide bombers, according to police
officials. Several men have been detained for questioning; one of them, a man
identified only as Hasan who was suspected of having lived with the suicide bombers
in Bali, was released Thursday, Reuters reported.
No hard evidence has been found that Jemaah Islamiyah was responsible for the Oct.
1 attacks, the police have said, but two members of the organization, Mohamad
Noordin Top and Azhari Husin, are prime suspects.
The pressure to ban the group is coming almost completely from other countries.
Senior government officials say they worry that a ban would create a political
backlash among moderate Muslims.
The largest Islamic group in Indonesia, Nahdlatul Ulama, has condemned the terrorist
acts but stopped short of calling for a ban on Jemaah Islamiyah.
Goenawan Mohamad, one of the country's leading intellectuals, a political liberal and
a nominal Muslim, said banning the group would only help it by giving it a certain
"aura of illegality," which would make it even more popular.
The organization grew out of a movement that called for an Islamic state. It turned to
violence, and made links with Al Qaeda, in the 1990s, but has been seriously
weakened in the past year.
Sidney Jones, who has written extensively about the group for the International Crisis
Group, an independent research institute, said a ban would not give the police any
new tools.
Nevertheless, "on balance," she said, maybe it should be banned. "It would be an
acknowledgment by the government of the danger with this particular organization,"
she said.
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