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| Southeast Asia |
| Gufron Arrest May Lead to Suharto’s Dark Forces |
| 2002-12-11 |
| The arrest of Ali Gufron, alias Mukhlas, alleged to be the operations chief of Jemaah Islamiyah and of carrying out the October 12 bombings on Bali, was a significant step in exposing the structure of terrorist networks in Indonesia. That's the terrorist network the country's vice president sez doesn't exist... The arrest of Gufron and Said Sungkar, the youngest brother of the alleged founder of Jemaah Islamiyah and the Ngruki-Al Mukmin boarding school at Solo, Abdullah Sungkar, prompted positive comments coming from western diplomats. ‘‘It shows that when there is the political will, they have the ability to do it,’’ one said. I missed it when Said was nabbed. Wonder what alias he was using at the time? It was no secret that the police authorities had been hunting Gufron for several weeks, and the fact that he had not fled Indonesia raises tantalizing questions about the whereabouts of other suspects with possible ties to international terrorist networks in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. The arrest of Gufron also suggests a remarkable arrogance on his part in assuming he would be safe on his own territory, or that he had decided there was little point in running once the first arrests were made. I'd go with the arrogance. If he'd thought he was really in danger, it would have been fairly simple to make it to Malaysia, where he could stand around looking aggrieved and some Arab could finance a mouthpiece for him. I think he thought that even with the coppers hitting the cannon fodder like Brother Amrozi, he was safe because Bashir was staying mum and Hamzah Haz was running interference. I'm sure there are still several people in Southeast Asia who don't think Haz is either an idiot or deeply involved in the mess — and more likely the latter than the former. There may be as many as a dozen. With Gufron’s arrest, the most hunted man in Southeast Asia is now probably Ridwan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali. He was believed to be the operations chief of Jemaah Islamiyah before he turned over his command to Gufron. As the noose tightens on Hambali, security authorities also expect to uncover a series of links back to covert operations conducted by former intelligence czar General Ali Murtopo in the 1970s in the interests of the Suharto regime. And that might have had something to do with Mukhlas' expectation of the investigation being shortstopped before it got close to him... An intelligence source told Laksamana.Net that the arrest of Hambali would be a significant step in tracing former high-ranking military officers and probably former government officials who were instrumental in influencing Imam Samudra to mount the Bali operation. This is starting to sound kind of like the way ISI does business, isn't it? He says authorities also believe to uncover previous bombings such as the church bombings on Christmas eve 2000, and the alleged attempted assassination of President Megawati Sukarnoputri. The source says that in the 1970s Hambali was a Special Operations (Opsus) plant into Jemaah Islamiyah. He was given the codename G-8 and tasked with building the financial structure of Jemaah Islamiyah. "Our man in Ngruki." Whoever Hambali is, for the incumbent government, capturing the mastermind of the Bali terrorist attack is as much a matter of disclosing the dark forces of the Suharto era rather than only a part of the US war against terrorism and al Qaeda. Guess it's all connected, isn't it? |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #1 If Hambali is the link to the higher-ups, what are the odds he is already "sleeping with the fishes?" If I was involved and worried about being implicated, I'd be busy cleaning up loose ends about now. |
| Posted by: Steve 2002-12-11 21:24:05 |