The Sydney Morning Herald, November 26, 2004
Police identify six terror nests on Java
Indonesian police identified six suspected terrorist "nests" just a day after arresting
four of the Australian embassy bombers.
The chief of central Java police Inspector General Chaerul Rasyid said yesterday
anti-terrorist teams were watching six areas on the forested slopes of Salem
mountain, near the villages of Losari and Brebes, on the border between west and
central Java.
"I don't want to mention exactly which area they are in," he said. "But for sure there
are six areas that we suspect."
He said suicide bombers were being recruited and trained in the area.
Volunteers were being offered payment for their families of about $35,000 to blow
themselves up.
"It's only 250 million rupiah for being recruited as a carrier and perpetrator of
bombings," Inspector General Chaerul told the Media Indonesia newspaper.
The chief of Brebes police Bambang Purwanto confirmed police suspected six areas
in the heavy jungles along Java's volcanic spine.
"It's true. We suspect that mountain area because it is isolated and connects central
Java to Kuningan [near Cirebon] in west Java," he said.
Police on Wednesday said they had captured four men believed to have carried out
the embassy bombing, including the field co-ordinator of the attack, named Rois.
Also arrested during a wave of raids on November 5 were three other men: Hasan,
Apuy and Sogir - a master bomb maker. All were wearing suicide bomb belts.
But the mastermind and chief achitect of several bombings carried out by the
al-Qaeda linked Jemaah Islamiah network, Malaysian Azahari Husin, slipped through
police dragnets when he went unrecognised by traffic officers on three occasions.
Rumours were swirling in Jakarta that Azahari had also been captured, but authorities
were keeping his arrest quiet to capture JI suicide bomb recruiter Noordin Top.
Police had managed to stop Rois and his three colleagues from blowing themselves
up by using a local bus driver to lure them into the open, where their arms were
pinned by teams of four anti-terror squad officers.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the discovery of several bombs packed into
luggage bags and backpacks highlighted that JI was still a threat, despite being
decimated by a wave of arrests after Bali.
"We don't have any specific information about places that might be targeted involving
Australian or other nationalities," he told the Nine Network.
"But this is a point we have made on many occasions that the Jemaah Islamiah
operation does target Western targets, they're a particularly focused on Americans,
but they do single out Western targets. "
Mr Downer confirmed Azahari had been stopped by police but he successfully offered
the officer a bribe to escape.
"The story goes that what he did was he bribed a traffic policeman who stopped him,"
he told radio 5DN.
"Now, Indonesia has 270,000 police, an enormous number of police in a country of
210 million people; so, you know, that's not to excuse what's happened, but it's to
say that these things can happen."
Mr Downer praised the work of the Indonesian police after the Bali bombings, Marriott
Hotel bombing and the embassy attack.
"They've really broken up the Jemaah Islamiah network but they still haven't got
everybody," he said.
AAP
Copyright © 2004. The Sydney Morning Herald.
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