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| Down Under |
| Police close in on most wanted Aussie terror suspects |
| 2003-07-30 |
| Indonesian police are piecing together the 10-year journey of Islamic extremist Abdul Rahim Ayub — Australia’s most wanted terrorist suspect — with investigators now showing pictures of him to Bali bombing suspects in the hope of making arrests. The photos of Ayub and his twin brother, Abdur Rahman Ayub, are believed to have been seized either in recent Indonesian police raids or in swoops conducted by ASIO and the Australian Federal Police on Ayub’s Perth home. But Ayub — alleged to be the chief of Australia’s embryonic JI cell — had already fled his home in the suburb of Thornlie, leaving on October 15 to attend a JI leaders’ summit on October 17 in a remote Indonesian village. On the run, he is known to have attended another JI meeting in Indonesia last April. The pivotal role played by the Ayub brothers in JI’s expansion plans emerged only last week in testimony at a Bali bombing trial. Last Wednesday, prosecutors questioned Idris, the Afghan-trained fighter who escorted two suicide bombers to Jalan Legian on October 12. Idris said he was sworn in by a top JI boss, Abdul Rohim, in 1993 at the Ngruki Islamic school in Solo, central Java. After his testimony, Indonesian police showed Idris a picture of Ayub, but he could not say with certainty that he recognised the photograph. The AFP and ASIO have been frantically seeking to establish the veracity of the claims, which suggest JI may have made more significant progress in Perth and Sydney than initially believed. However, his possible sponsorship of some of the Bali bombing suspects has raised new questions on the extent to which terrorists have infiltrated Australia — and whether sleeper cells have been established. In a summary of Idris’s confession, read by the Herald, he nominates a man called Abdul Rohim Toyib as the JI leader who presided at the ceremony, which commits members to perform jihad in retaliation for the suppression of Muslim followers across the world. Idris went on to tell police Toyib later went to Australia to set up a mantiqi, one of four chapters of JI throughout South-East Asia. It is now believed Toyib is an alias used by Ayub. He first settled in Sydney in 1997, and attempted — with the blessing of JI’s spiritual leader, Abu Bakar Bashir — to take control of a mosque at Dee Why, on Sydney’s northern beaches. Those efforts failed and Ayub moved to Perth. His brother, Abdur Rahman, was deported in 1999 after an attempt to seek refugee status. |
| Posted by:Paul Moloney |