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Jakarta Arrests Militant Muslim Chief Over Ambon


REUTERS, Sat May 4, 2002 12:07 PM ET

Jakarta Arrests Militant Muslim Chief Over Ambon

By Joanne Collins

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia said Saturday it arrested the head of a top Islamic militant group over recent violence in the eastern city of Ambon as troops fired warning shots in the troubled city to disperse protesters.

A police official said Jafar Umar Thalib, commander of the militant Laskar Jihad group, was arrested over last weekend's violence that killed at least 12 people and raised fresh doubts about a fragile peace pact signed in February.

"Jafar Umar (Thalib) has been arrested...in connection with Ambon," Indonesia's national police spokesman Saleh Saaf told Reuters.

He said Thalib was arrested in the East Java capital of Surabaya and had been flown to Jakarta for questioning and detention.

"He has violated the law -- has been preaching and insulting the government and has provoked Muslims and asked them to prepare bombs," Saaf later told a news conference.

It is believed speculation over Thalib's arrest sparked the fresh unrest in Ambon -- capital city of Indonesia's Moluccan islands -- where the military fired warning shots and tear gas to quell several thousand Muslim protesters. There were reports that at least one person was killed and three were injured.

The protesters, some armed with Molotov cocktails, were trying to stir up violence in a Christian area when police intervened, a witness said.

"They were gathered near a local mosque...then they tried to get into the Christian area but the soldiers stopped them by firing shots above," the witness told Reuters by telephone from Ambon, some 2,300 km (1,400 miles) east of Jakarta.

"They began protesting because they heard rumors that Jafar Umar Thalib would be arrested today," he added.

The official Antara news agency reported three people were wounded in the protest and hospital staff in Ambon told Reuters one person had been killed.

BLOODBATH

More than 5,000 people have been killed in Muslim-Christian fighting in the island chain since 1999.

The Laskar Jihad group has become the face of militant Indonesian Islam after sending thousands of men to the Moluccas during the fighting.

The group, which has denied it has ties to international terrorism, said the aim was to protect Muslims, but critics said they aggravated the situation and should go home.

Indonesia has suffered from a series of religious, ethnic and separatist conflicts since the autocratic Suharto (news - web sites) was ousted in 1998 after more than three decades in power. His departure has brought to the surface tensions that were largely suppressed during his rule.

The Moluccas is only one of several flashpoints where separatist, communal or religious tensions threaten stability across the vast archipelago nation.

Despite the peace pact, the Moluccas remain under a civil emergency status, one level down from martial law. It allows security forces to search houses and detain suspects, as well as, clamp down on mass media they classify as provocative.

Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
 


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