REUTERS, Friday September 9, 2005 3:00 PM
Analyst says Indonesia mistook him for terrorist
JAKARTA/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A prominent Singapore-based counter-terrorism
expert and author on al Qaeda who was detained by Indonesian police said on Friday
he had been mistaken for a terrorist.
Rohan Gunaratna, a frequent commentator on Islamic militancy and terrorism in Asia,
said the misunderstanding, which arose due to visa-related issues, had been cleared
up and that he would be allowed back to the Moluccas islands to continue his
research.
"The Moluccas have a considerable amount of activities. The police are constantly
looking out for foreigners and I was mistaken to be part of a terrorist organisation,"
Gunaratna told Reuters from the provincial capital Ambon.
"I was brought in for questioning on Saturday but beyond that there is no issue at all. I
want to stress that our relationship with the police is still very good and they were very
cordial," he said.
Gunaratna, a Sri Lankan, is the author of "Inside al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror"
and is attached to Singapore's Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at the
National Technological University in Singapore.
Moluccas police spokesman Artstianto Darmawan said earlier on Friday that police
had arrested Gunaratna in the eastern Moluccas islands for doing research while
holding a tourist visa and would deport him shortly. ADVERTISEMENT
The Moluccas islands saw vicious communal fighting between Muslims and
Christians from 1999 to 2002 in which more than 5,000 people were killed.
A peace agreement in early 2002 halted the fighting, which at its height had attracted
militants linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
Gunaratna said he was on his way to Jakarta and would return to Indonesia in
November to hold a workshop on terrorism for the police.
Early reports about Gunaratna's arrest had raised the spectre of Indonesia clamping
down on foreign political analysts again.
In June 2004, Indonesia -- under a different administration -- expelled Jakarta-based
terrorism expert Sidney Jones after a series of hard-hitting reports on terrorism in
Indonesia.
Jones, the Southeast Asia director of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group
thinktank, was recently allowed to return and live in Jakarta.
Indonesia also barred Australian academic Edward Aspinall, an expert on the civil
conflict in Aceh province, from entering the country earlier this year.
In both cases, the government defended its right to admit whom it chose but officials
had been vague about precisely what either had done to cause the expulsions.
(Reporting by Karima Anjani in JAKARTA and Fayen Wong in SINGAPORE)
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