JI planning another Bali-scale terrorist attack, says paper
JAKARTA: Planning is well under way for a terrorist attack in Indonesia this year that could be as devastating as the 2002 Bali bombings, according to a document obtained by The Straits Times.
The document is a letter from a Sumatran-based operative of the Jemaah Islamiah which tells of militants being trained for suicide bombings in the capital.
It was written to the network’s top bomb maker Azahari Husin, a Malaysian who has been on the run after plotting three of Indonesia’s worst terrorist strikes.
A leading Indonesian security official and terrorism expert believes the note is authentic.
Dated Nov 26, 2004, the seven-page letter is written in pidgin Arabic, which is used by religious clerics in boarding schools here.
Ansyaad Mbai, a senior Indonesian counter-terrorism official who studied the letter, said: “It is a credible document and corroborates some of our findings in the field that there will be another bombing.”
They chose a letter to communicate because the Internet and telephones in the region are being monitored closely, a fact acknowledged in the document itself.
The letter also names Palembang and Padang in Sumatra as hiding places for “the tools” of a future terrorist operation.
Ansyaad, who heads the counter-terrorism desk in the Co-ordinating Ministry for Politics and Security, estimated that there were up to 30 JI members involved.
“Indonesia is facing an imminent Bali-style attack from these radicals,” he said. “The cells might be splintered but they are still being held together by a common jihadist ideological platform to build an Islamic Caliphate in the region.”
American officials here said that the document “tracks with some of the information we have been receiving”.
Lewis Amselem, the Deputy Chief of Mission in the US Embassy said: “It is in keeping with some of the things that JI militants have done before and are planning to do.” – The Straits Times/ANN
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