On Monday, state-owned media reported that police took DNA samples from the family of Mr. Sahid in the village of Temanggung in Central Java, a province on Indonesia's biggest island. Although the police have recovered the bodies of both suicide bombers involved in the attacks, which killed nine people, they have been unable to positively identify the bodies due to the extent of their injuries from the blasts. A senior national police spokesman declined to comment while the investigation into the bombers' identity was ongoing.
Intelligence officials have already said they believe Noordin Mohammad Top, one of Southeast Asia's most-wanted terrorists, was the mastermind of the bombings, though police haven't formally identified him by name, either.
Sidney Jones, an expert on Islamic terrorist groups in Southeast Asia and an adviser to the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based peace-building advocacy body, says Mr. Sahid graduated from the Al-Mukmin Islamic boarding school in the village of Ngruki in central Java in 1995. Many of the school's alumni went on to become members of Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian affiliate of al Qaeda that carried out attacks against nightclubs, embassies and hotels in Indonesia between 2000 and 2005, killing almost 300 people.
Ms. Jones estimates that 15 members of the class of 1995 have carried out terrorist attacks, including a previous suicide car bombing at the JW Marriott, in 2003, which killed 12 people. Mr. Sahid, she said, is "part of this very famous class."
The latest attacks have rattled many Indonesians, who had grown accustomed to several years of stability after a run of terrorist attacks earlier in the decade. On Monday, Indonesia's trade minister said she thought the suicide bombings would have a limited impact on local markets, including the stock and currency markets, and that Indonesia's economic fundamentals remain strong, with growth expected to register between 4.0% and 4.5% this year. Most analysts so far have agreed, saying they suspect the attack will be a one-off affair and that Indonesian police are more experienced in tracking down terrorists than before. Indonesian markets were closed Monday for an Islamic holiday.
"Of course, we can expect travel and tourism to be affected in the short term (but) Indonesia has demonstrated its resilience," the trade minister, Mari Pangestu, told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview. "We will also be resilient in overcoming this current unfortunate situation," she said.
Indonesian police say the latest bombings, which used homemade explosives and hit Western targets, show the hallmarks of Jemaah Islamiyah, whose goal is to create an Islamic caliphate in Southeast Asia.
Scores of the shadowy group's cadres have been arrested in recent years in security crackdowns. But Mr. Sahid evaded capture and remained in contact with Mr. Noordin. In recent years, Mr. Sahid is believed to have rented safe houses in Wonosobo, Central Java, for Mr. Noordin and his associates, Ms. Jones said. Police raided the houses in 2006, killing two Jemaah Islamiyah members, but were unable to locate Mr. Noordin or Mr. Sahid.
In recent months, the search for Mr. Noordin has focused on Cilacap, Central Java. Last week, just before the bombings, police raided a house belonging to Mr. Noordin's father-in-law in Cilacap, uncovering explosive material similar to an undetonated bomb found in the JW Marriott, according to senior antiterrorism officials. But again, they missed Mr. Noordin, whose whereabouts are unknown.
Ms. Jones said she did not think that Abu Bakar Bashir, a firebrand Islamic cleric who co-founded the Al-Mukmin boarding school in 1972, and has been described as the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, was involved in the latest attacks. Mr. Bashir was jailed for conspiracy after the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 mostly Western tourists. But he was released in 2006 and Indonesia's Supreme Court later overturned his conviction.
After his release, Mr. Bashir returned to the school and set up a new above-ground Islamic group, Jemaah Ansharut Tauhid, to focus on religious education and the imposition of Shariah law in Indonesia, a secular nation.
He no longer appears to have any active involvement with current operative terrorists, Ms. Jones said.
Few graduates of Al-Mukmin since 1995 have been involved in terrorist attacks, Ms. Jones notes. Still, Mr. Bashir's two sons teach anti-democratic sermons there, she says, and a number of the children of convicted Jemaah Islamiyah members are enrolled, making it a potential recruiting ground for hard-line Islamists.
—P.R. Venkat contributed to this article.
No comments:
Post a Comment