ABC AUSTRALIA, 25/11/2004
INDONESIA: Questions remain despite Jakarta arrests
Judges in an Indonesian court have ruled the trial of radical Islamic leader Abu Bakar
Bashir must proceed, overruling objections from the elderly cleric's lawyers. The ruling
follows this week's arrest in Jakarta of four key suspects involved in the bomb attack
on Australia's embassy in Jakarta ... the arrests were hailed as a breakthrough.
Indonesian police chief Da'i Bachtiar said the four included associates of two
Malaysian fugitives accused of masterminding the September 9th attack, which killed
11 people.
 Listen
Presenter/Interviewer: Sen Lam
Speakers: Dr Damien Kingsbury, Deakin University.
KINGSBURY: The arrests are obviously very significant, it does show that the effort
that's being put into tracking down Jemaah Islamiyah activists is showing some
results. I think the interesting thing though is that they've kept them under wraps now
for several weeks and that is indicative I think of the sensitivity around this issue. But,
there still are a number of unanswered questions and the timing of the bombing is very
interesting. Da'i Bachtiar, the chief of police, was actually speaking to the Legislative
Assembly at the time of the bombings, telling them that in fact terrorism was under
control, at exactly the moment the bomb went off. Now that's probably just a little
more than a coincidence. The fact that it was an electoral period is probably still
significant and the fact that it wasn't discussed and the video footage of the van when
it drove up to the entrance of the embassy showed, I think fairly clearly, that there
were two people in it. Yet the police have been insisting now for quite some time that
there was in fact only one driver, and that's not really been explained.
LAM: So what do we know about the four suspects that were arrested. I mean how
clear are we that they were indeed linked to Jemaah Islamiyah?
KINGSBURY: It seems highly likely that they were in fact linked to Jemaah Islamiyah.
You've got to keep in mind of couse that Jemaah Islamiyah members don't carry
cards which state their affiliation. But given who they knew and certainly given the
explosives that were found with them, it does seem likely that they were in fact
connected and that they were some part of some sort of cell or network, which is
generally identified as Jemaah Islamiyah.
LAM: Is the net closing though on the top terror recruiters and the fugitives like
Azahari Husin and Noordin Mohammad Top from these four arrests ?
KINGSBURY: Well certainly some of the players are being picked up; no the key
players seem to be free at this stage and I don't think its clear that Top and Azahari
are in fact necessarily involved in this. I mean there has been no evidence produced to
date to prove that link. Now this is not to say that they're not but it is to say that there
is a tendency in Indonesia to draw links where they may not necessarily exist usually
for political purposes. Certainly those two figures, appear well they're certainly are still
on the loose and they appear to be in Indonesia, the police apparently picked up one
of them recently and let him off after a bribe was paid, which is unfortunately
conventional practice for the police. I guess the issue is, who is really at the bottom of
this bombing? Who is behind this organisatiion? I don't think it's as simple as Islamist
fundamentalists. There really do appear to be links here which are not being
adequately explored and this really does raise questions around the motives of the
bombing and indeed who is behind this campaign. And in this I would point to things
like the fact that it seems they used military explosives in the bombing. The bomb
was designed as an anti-personnel bomb, it wasn't actually designed to damage the
building and it was detonated obviously well away from the actual structure of the
building. It really does raise questions about what this was about. The question is,
who the shadowy figures are and if you look back to, say, the stock-exchange
bombing of a couple of years ago, two Kopassus special forces members were
ultimately charged and convicted with that offence. Given the linkages between
members of Jemaah Islamiyah and members of Kopassus going back many years,
and the fact that Jemaah Islamiyah in this case seems to have access to military
explosives and a number of other military items it really raises the question as I say
as to who is behind it and what the motives are and in relation as I say to the timing
and in particular to Da'i Bachtiar being before the Legislature.
LAM: And from your reading of the situation, how much grassroots cooperation do
you think went into or led to the four arrests, in providing security forces and the
police, with information?
KINGSBURY: There certainly seems to be some interest on the part of many
Indonesians to assist in these investigations, where they have knowledge. Having said
that not many ordinary Indonesians have much knowledge about this and indeed there
was a survey conducted only a few days ago which showed that a very significant
proportion of the Indonesian population is either in favour of this type of activity or
indeed just not opposed to it and that's a worringly high figure. So whilst there is
some concern on the part of the general Indonesian population hoping to see terrorism
done away with and for very good reason, there's also a lot of sympathy too for the
more extreme Islamist groups and organisations that engage in these sorts of
activities. In terms of the provision of information, I expect it's probably less people
with information coming forward voluntarily or more a case of information being
extracted from those people who are already in custody.
©2004 ABC
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