ABU Bakar Bashir, the Muslim cleric and 2002 Bali bombings suspect, has been arrested by Indonesian police for alleged involvement with terrorism.
His lawyer, Muhammad Ali, said his client was taken in early today, allegedly for involvement with a new militant network in Indonesia’s westernmost province of Aceh.
Police said Bashir, 71, was arrested by the Indonesian police anti-terrorist taskforce Detachment 88 while travelling from Ciamis in West Java, where he had been attending Koran recitals, to his home in Solo. Taken to police headquarters in Jakarta, Bashir said as he was led into the building: “This is Allah’s blessing; this is America’s fabrication.”
Bashir is accused of involvement in an Islamic militant training camp uncovered by police in Aceh province in February, said counter-terrorism chief at the security ministry, Ansyaad Mbai. “He had been involved in terror network in Aceh. As we know, that terror group in Aceh is linked with Jemaah Islamiah and many other extremist groups in our country,” Mbai told Agence France Presse.
“One of the allegations is that he provided funding to the Aceh military training. It’s one of many allegations weighed against him,” he added. In the aftermath of the discovery of the training camp, police claimed to have killed 13 suspects, including the senior Jemaah Islamiah operative and Bali bomber Dulmatin, and arrested more than 60 others.
Three members of Jamaah Ansharut Tauhid, a group established by Bashir after splitting from the Indonesian Mujahadeen Council two years ago, are already under arrest on suspicion of helping to finance the Aceh operation. Rumours have circulated for weeks that Bashir, a fiery preacher known for propagating hatred against foreigners, was next on the list.
Bashir has denied he or members of his group are linked to the Aceh group. On Saturday, police arrested five suspects and seized high-explosive materials in separate anti-terror raids in several areas in West Java province. The target of the alleged terror plots was not immediately clear, but Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Saturday said police had foiled a terror plot against him as he visited the province.
Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith hailed today’s arrest. “Australia welcomes the fact that Indonesian police have today arrested Abu Bakar Bashir in connection with possible terrorism-related offences,” Mr Smith said. Wahyudin, the director of Bashir’s Al Mukmin Islamic boarding school in Solo, told the Jakarta Globe today that the cleric’s wife, Aisyah, might also have been taken into custody.
Bashire’s son, Abdul Rohim, insisted his father, who went to Ciamis for a preaching engagement, was innocent. “He was heading back to Solo when police arrested him together with my mother,” he said. “We appeal police to treat my parents well. … He is innocent, he was just carrying out his obligations as as Muslim”.
Bashir is best-known as the alleged founder and spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiah, the al-Qa’ida-linked group responsible for the Bali bombings that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.
Bashir, who denies the association and that JI even exists, was jailed in 2005 on a charge of conspiracy in relation to the 2002 outrage but acquitted of charges arising from the Marriott Hotel bombing the following year. In June 2006 he was released from prison and in December that year the Supreme Court overturned his conviction.
The International Crisis Group last month said it was possible Bashir’s arrest would have little impact on Indonesian extremism. “He is very much the elder statesman of Indonesia’s radical movement, but he is neither the driving force behind it now nor its leading ideologue,” it said in a report. But authorities should handle the arrest with care to avoid a backlash, it warned.
“If Bashir is arrested for a third time since the first Bali bombing, the police will be under enormous pressure to produce hard evidence of criminal activities.”
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