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| Southeast Asia |
| Jakarta coppers arrest Bashir |
| 2002-10-19 |
| Police on Saturday arrested Abu Bakar Bashir, as the government toughened its stance on extremists in the wake of the Bali bombing. Bashir was arrested in a hospital in Solo city after he failed to travel to Jakarta to answer a police summons for questioning as a suspect in a bombing spree. That "I can't make it, I'm sick" wheeze is pretty old... Hours earlier, the Cabinet approved a tough emergency decree which authorises death by firing squad for some terrorist offences and detention without trial. Ummm... That idea'd make me sick, too. Especially if I was a prime candidate to count muzzle blasts... Director of criminal investigations, Brigadier-General Aryanto Sutadi, said by phone from the Central Java city: 'As of now, he is formally arrested but he will remain in hospital until he is healthy enough. After that, we will detain him. He is now under police control.' My guess is that his illness will now become chronic, though not terminal. The longer he stays in the hospital, lovingly attended by a bevy of properly Islamic nurses, the better the chances of his followers and fellow travellers getting the fix in... Abu Bakar's non-appearance was the first test of President Megawati Sukarnoputri's resolve in cracking down on terror suspects since the Oct 12 bombing. A police spokesman, Brigadier-General Edward Aritonang, said Abu Bakar is not a suspect in that blast. 'For the moment, he has been arrested for his involvement in the Omar Al-Faruq case,' he said, adding that police had 24 hours to either charge him with a crime or take other measures. Police said they summoned Aub Bakar after Omar, an alleged Al-Qaeda operative detained by American authorities, had implicated the cleric in bomb plots during questioning by Indonesian investigators. This was after Singapore and Malaysia had done the same, as a result of their own investigations... |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |