Net begins to close in on Indonesian extremists

By Matthew Moore, Herald Correspondent in Jakarta, and agencies
October 21 2002

Indonesian police yesterday announced the formal arrest of the Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, who is accused of terrorist activities, but said they had no plans to remove him from his hospital bed, where he has been since collapsing on Friday.

Police first detained Abu Bakar in hospital in the Central Java town of Solo for a 24-hour period from Saturday before announcing yesterday that they had tightened their legal hold on him. "At around noon we officially changed his status into a police detainee," said the national director of criminal investigations, Brigadier-General Aryanto Sutadi.
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Singapore and Malaysia have accused Abu Bakar of being the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiah (JI), which wants to incorporate several Asian countries, including Indonesia, into a giant Islamic state.

The Immigration Minister, Philip Ruddock, yesterday confirmed Abu Bakar entered Australia "on a fairly significant number" of occasions during the 1990s, usually under an assumed identity. The Australian Government has said it believes JI is probably responsible for the Bali bombings, something Abu Bakar strenuously denies.
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Abu Bakar's lawyer said police had told him they might extend his client's questioning. The move on Abu Bakar came after Western governments, including the United States, Australia and Japan last week increased their pressure on Indonesia to crack down on terrorism and find those responsible for the Bali bombings.

Indonesia's Defence Minister, Matori Abdul Djalil, said at the weekend that Abu Bakar was linked to al-Qaeda and that his right-hand man, known as Hambali, was behind many of the country's terrorist bombings.
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Early on Saturday Indonesia's cabinet enacted a new anti-terrorism regulation giving police broad new powers to detain terrorism suspects without charge.

However, Abu Bakar's sudden illness may undermine attempts to quickly interrogate terrorism suspects identified by the senior al-Qaeda figure Omar al-Faruq.

Al-Faruq was interviewed last week by Indonesian police who said they were convinced by his allegations made first to the CIA in September that Abu Bakar played a key role in a series of church bombings that killed nearly 20 people in Christmas 2000 and was planning a car bomb attack on the US embassy in Jakarta for September 11.

There are also reports that al-Faruq told the CIA that money controlled by al-Qaeda's leader, Osama bin Laden, was used to buy explosives for the Bali attack.

Al-Faruq told the CIA that $US74,000 ($135,000) was transferred from bin Laden to JI.

Al-Faruq's claims add weight to those that the Bali bombings were part of al-Qaeda's worldwide campaign against the West.