By Cindy Wockner
September 10, 2004
THE latest terrorist car bomb to explode in Jakarta has all the hallmarks of the work of Jemaah Islamiyah bombmaker Dr Azahari Husin.
Azahari, and his lieutenant Noordin Mohammad Top, have been on the run and eluding police since the Bali nightclub bombings almost two years ago.
Azahari, a professor who spent time studying at university in Adelaide, will no doubt now be the number one suspect for the Australian Embassy bombing.
Other Bali bombing suspects named him as supervising the making of the car bomb which exploded outside the Sari Club in Kuta, Bali. Police have also named his as being responsible for the August, 2003 bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta.
Azahari, an Afghanistan war "alumni", perfected his skills while fighting the Soviets. In the late 1990s he worked as a lecturer at the University of Technology in Malaysia. In the late 1980s, having failed his engineering course in Adelaide, Azahari went to Britain to Reading University where he studied and obtained his doctorate.
This latest bombing, aimed directly at Australians in Jakarta and at the Government, throws the spotlight on Indonesia and how seriously it takes JI.
Questions will no doubt be asked why Azahari and Noordin have not been caught despite tracking them around the country.
The Embassy bombing comes soon after Australia criticised Indonesian authorities for allowing self-confessed Bali bomber Ali Imron, who is serving a life term for his role in the attack which killed 200 people, to enjoy a coffee at a Indonesian shopping mall with a police chief. The outing was said by Indonesian police to be part of normal investigative techniques.
The Embassy bombing will also increase pressure on Indonesia's President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who is facing the polls in less than two weeks and who appears to be fighting for her political future.
On September 20, Megawati and challenger, Susilo Bambang Yudyohono, will contest the second round of the presidential elections. Most Indonesians cite corruption as one of the biggest problems facing the country, however, Susilo has previously promised to stamp out terrorists and have them buried under children's playgrounds.
Their reaction to the Australian Embassy attacks, as they prepare to face the voters, will be illuminating. (Source: The Daily Telegraph)
=================================================
Profile: Jemaah Islamiyah
Simon Jeffrey looks into the history of the organisation police are blaming for today's Australian embassy bombing
Simon Jeffery
Thursday September 9, 2004
It was the Bali bombings in October 2002 that cemented Jemaah Islamiyah's reputation as one of south-east Asia's deadliest terrorist outfits. It had been blamed for attacks before - a series of Indonesian church bombings in 2000, strikes on US targets in the Philippines - but, in the world of Islamist insurgency, Bali moved it up a notch.
Since Bali it has been blamed for the August 2003 car bombing of the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta, which killed 12, and, today, an attack on the nearby Australian embassy that has claimed at least eight lives. It aims to create a unified Islamic state in south-east Asia and forms links with similarly-minded groups.
What was always unknown about JI was the extent to which it retained an operational capacity. While Bali, with 202 people killed, was its big spectacular, as much as 9/11 was for al-Qaida, it also marked the beginning of a determined effort by the Indonesian government to put an end to its activities.
Before those two attacks, on Paddy's Bar and the Sari nightclub in Kuta, Jakarta had tolerated JI for fear of inflaming radical Muslim opinion and the US state department did not list it as a terrorist organisation, again to avoid making President Megawati Sukarnoputri vulnerable to extremists.
Unusually for a such group, JI was largely pursued through the courts: three men were sentenced to death and 29 others given jail sentences, though the convictions were thrown into doubt in July when a court ruled that anti-terrorism laws brought in after the attack could not be applied retrospectively.
With around 100 suspected JI members including Hambali, its operational chief, in some form of custody and its alleged leader, radical cleric Abu Bakar Ba'aysir, sentenced to four years in jail over the church bombings, the clampdown appeared to have worked.
After Hambali was captured in August last year, the Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer, said his detention (he is thought to be held by the US) would "substantially downgrade" JI's ability to launch attacks.
But the most significant member still on the run was a Malaysian, Azahari Husin, JI's alleged master bombmaker and a key figure behind the Bali attack. The British-educated engineer and former university lecturer (called the "demolition man" by Malaysian newspapers) is still on the run, believed to be protected by a small circle of JI members. Suspicion has fallen on him for the Australian embassy bombing.
"We believe Azahari is behind this," a security official told the Associated Press. "He has the expertise to manufacture the explosives required for a bombing of this scale."
Along with another Malaysian fugitive, Noordin Mohammed Top, he is believed to have made the 2003 Marriott bomb with dynamite and ammonium nitrate, a fertiliser that can be transformed into explosives.
That two Malaysians are perhaps the most senior figures in what began as an Indonesian group is indicative of JI's expansion across south-east Asia in the 1990s. It is believed to be linked to Osama bin Laden's inner circle through Hambali, who was the only non-Arab to serve on al-Qaida's consultative councils before the September 11 attacks.
An Australian court heard this year that its first convicted terrorist, British-born Muslim convert Jack Roche, used his contacts in JI to connect with al-Qaida. Prosecutors said he travelled to Afghanistan and received orders from top al-Qaida officials to form a terrorist cell in Australia to carry out a bomb plot against a Canberra synagogue.
The trial also heard evidence from Roche that Ba'aysir, who was never charged with JI membership, was the group's leader. "Ultimately, he's the one who makes decisions regarding the structure of JI in south-east Asia," Roche said in videotaped police interviews.
The cleric denies he heads JI - and today said he opposed all bombings - but Roche's evidence contributed to Indonesian prosecutors being able to file further charges this month.
Some suggest that the Jakarta attack was JI's response to the charges, others that, like Madrid, it was timed to influence the Australian election. But the group's motives are not easy to divine. Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, the "smiling" Bali bomber, said he had wanted the nightclub strike to make people to realise they had "deserted their places of worship [...] and turned to the places of sin".
(Source: The Guardian)
