The Jakarta Post, 12/18/2004 5:10:10 PM
Australia urged 'to assassinate' Ba'asyir
SYDNEY, Australia (DPA): Hunting and killing known terrorist kingpins makes more
sense than invading a country to get at them, a former top-ranking Australian diplomat
said on Saturday.
Duncan Campbell, a former ambassador to Rome and Vienna, said Abu Bakar
Ba'asyir, the leader of South East Asian terror network Jamaah Islamiyah (JI), would
be a prime target for a state-sponsored assassination.
"Why should we wait for a murderous fanatic such as Ba'asyir in Java to strike
against us first?" Campbell asked The Sydney Morning Herald.
The Java-based Islamic cleric is widely believed to have ordered the October 2002
bombing in the Indonesian island of Bali that took 202 lives, among them 88
Australians. Ba'asyir is on trial in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, for terrorism
offenses.
Campbell said it was absurd to blithely commit troops to an invasion that would cost
thousands of lives but be squeamish about rubbing out the leader of the enemy
forces.
"Why should not a known organizer of terrorist cells ... be mercifully removed when
there are covert and controlled means available for us to do so?"
He said Australians should debate the morality of taking one life to preserve many.
"Can you imagine how easy it ought to be in a prison such as the one Ba'asyir is in to
persuade someone, for a lump of money, to doctor his rice?" he said. "That wouldn't
involve Australian hands at all, except perhaps the passing by someone to someone
ofa little lump of chemicals of some sort."
The government of Prime Minister John Howard has said it does not support the sort
of targeted assassinations carried out by the Israeli armed forces against known
Palestine freedom fighters. (***)
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