TIME Asia, December 30, 2002—January 6, 2003/ Vol. 160 No. 25/26
Suspicions in Sulawesi New terror trail in Indonesia
BY ZAMIRA LOEBIS AND ANDREW PERRIN/MAKASSAR, NELLY
SINDAYEN/MANILA AND JASON TEDJASUKMANA/JAKARTA
[Photo: LEFT: BULLIT MARQUEZ/AP; RIGHT: GETTY IMAGES]
No Longer at Large: Dwikarna, left, and al-Faruq, right, may have co-founded
Sulawesi's Laskar Jundullah
After more than a year of trying to track down Jemaah Islamiah (JI), Southeast Asian
intelligence agencies are now also focusing on another group: Laskar Jundullah.
Following December's bombings at a Toyota dealer and a McDonald's restaurant in
Makassar, the South Sulawesi-based Islamic group has found itself the target of
police scrutiny, in part because of the group's own geneaology. One of its alleged
co-founders, Agus Dwikarna, is a convicted terrorist serving a 17-year jail sentence in
the Philippines, while the other is Kuwaiti Omar al-Faruq, the top al-Qaeda operative
in Southeast Asia until his June arrest in West Java. (He is now in U.S. custody at an
undisclosed location.) Other members have been detained; as with the JI
investigation, each arrest discloses more disturbing tidings. "They're more than they
claim to be," says General I Made Mangku Pastika, the chief Bali investigator. "We're
looking at them with suspicion."
The name means "Army of God Force," and its members work as security guards for
groups who want Islamic law imposed in South Sulawesi Province. It's a legally
registered organization.
After the Makassar bombings, police arrested 16 people, including five Laskar
Jundullah members. When they raided the houses of those five suspects, they found
semi-automatic rifles, bomb materials and, in the workshop of the alleged bomb
maker, detailed sketches of Christian churches. (Laskar Jundullah is openly
anti-Christian; Indonesian intelligence officials suspect that the group has been
provoking tension in Maluku and Poso.) According to National Police Chief Da'i
Bachtiar, one of the men arrested, Suryadi, is an associate of Imam Samudra, whom
police say was the mastermind of the Bali bombings and a devotee of Abubakar
Ba'asyir, alleged co-founder of JI. "Dwikarna, the bombers, Abubakar—all of these
people know each other and are connected in some way," says South Sulawesi
Police Chief Firman Gani.
Azwar Hasan, secretary-general of the Committee for Upholding Islamic Shari'a,
denies that Laskar Jundullah, which sometimes acts on its behalf as an enforcer of
Islamic purity, is involved in terrorism, and says it can't be held responsible for its
worst elements. "It's like asking an army general to be responsible if a rogue soldier in
his battalion breaks the rules," he says. When the foun-ders of the group them-selves
are detained terrorists, the problem may be more than a matter of a few rogues.
Copyright © 2002 Time Inc. All rights reserved.
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