Indonesia battles terrorist hit squads

...[T]he suicide bomber who attacked a mosque in a police compound last Friday was best known for his hardline activism against members of a Muslim sect and people accused of blasphemy. And they are concerns shared by many Indonesians.

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Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | Int'l Desk
Source/Credit: ABC News | Australia
By Matt Brown | April 19, 2011

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Indonesian counter-terrorism officials are confronting what they say is a disturbing new phenomenon - a growing number of small terrorist cells which act independently of any larger jihadi organisations.

The cells get their deadly training wherever they can, with one group turning to a terrorist who was previously jailed for his role in the attack on the Australian embassy in Jakarta in 2004.

In a dirty, ramshackle court in West Jakarta on Monday a little-known terrorist of particular note to Australian authorities was found guilty and sent to prison.


Heri Sigu Simboja, better known as Sogir, was introduced to violent jihad by his father, who is a veteran of Jemaah Islamiah and the jihad in Afghanistan.

Sogir was jailed in 2005 for helping to build the bomb that exploded outside the Australian embassy, but released early for good behaviour.

Then yesterday he was jailed again, this time for eight years, over his involvement in a new terrorist plot.

But among the good news, there was bad news for security in Indonesia, because buried in the indictment was evidence that, while he was free, Sogir played a key role in a worrying new trend.

He passed on his bomb-making skills to one of a growing number of radical small cells, whose members, unlike Sogir, do not start off as part of a centrally organised group.

Instead, they decide to sow terror off their own bat, and these enthusiastic amateurs have a wealth of experience to call on.

International Crisis Group senior adviser Sidney Jones says Sogir is "a great example of one of the people from the old networks who was deliberately approached by a couple, actually, of these new groups and asked for training".

"He was a person who was known to be an explosives expert, and when groups in the area where he was preaching after he was released decided that they too wanted to get involved in violence, they knew who to go to, and Sogir was their man."

Ms Jones says these small cells often begin as study groups in a hardline mosque but they evolve into self-powered hit squads dedicated to assassination and small-scale attacks.

"It's happening in places and among groups of people that might not have had a previous affiliation to one of the large organisations, and that's why it's both dangerous and it's certainly more difficult to track," she said.

To make matters worse, the line between terrorists and puritanical hardliners continues to blur.

For example, the suicide bomber who attacked a mosque in a police compound last Friday was best known for his hardline activism against members of a Muslim sect and people accused of blasphemy. And they are concerns shared by many Indonesians.

"He had a record of increasingly violent behaviour but on issues that were moving into the mainstream part of the community," Ms Jones says.

"I think that should be a warning sign that there is a direct linkage between the kind of increasing religious intolerance that we see in Indonesia and some of these other forms of violence.

"Because increasingly the groups that are advocating on the religious intolerance side are merging in to the terrorist side."


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