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| Southeast Asia |
| Police deny leaks let Bali suspects flee |
| 2005-10-10 |
| Indonesian police have denied any leaks within their ranks after Indonesia's most wanted man and one of the suspected Bali bomb masterminds escaped another predawn counter-terror squad raid. In a near carbon-copy of a bungled raid two years ago, suicide bomb recruiter and money man Noordin Mohamed Top slipped away from remote Purwantoro in central Java early on Friday morning, just hours before elite Detachment 88 police stormed his safehouse. Solo police commander Abdul Madjid said the Malaysian escaped after police delayed the raid until 4am because of fears Noordin, 35, might have been armed with explosives. The same thing happened almost two years ago in Bandung, when Noordin and his fellow bomb expert - bespectacled "Demolition Man" Azahari Husin - slipped past more than 1,000 officers in the cool Java highlands. âMissed him by that much, Chief!â [/Maxwell Smart] The duo, blamed for a string of attacks including the 2003 Marriott Hotel bombing in Jakarta, last year's Australian Embassy bombing and what the Indonesian media have called "Bom Bali II", disappeared into a maze of local alleyways. Just seven months before, police captured a Jemaah Islamiah militant in the Sumatra town of Pekan Baru, but missed Azahari walking right behind him. Azahari also slipped police in the minutes after the embassy attack when he bribed his way past unsuspecting traffic police on the back of a motorbike. Perhaps the pair are just lucky. Their photos are plastered over police notice boards, newspapers and television stations across the country. Mebbe it has something to do with how leniently the government has dealt with convicted terrorists like Bashir. Quite an example for their citizenry to follow, no? But their extraordinary run of escapes over a three-year campaign of terror has prompted speculation that someone in the police is tipping them off. The conspiracy mill in Jakarta would have it that police want them on the run to maintain the flow of foreign aid funding that has flooded into Indonesia since the 2002 Bali bombings to help combat terror in the country with more Muslims than any other. Indonesian National Police spokesman brigadier-general Soenarko Danu Ardanto said that made no sense. "Solo police got information and we were all into the field. We were all onto it," he told AAP. "The operation is still going on. "It could not be that there is a leak among the police." âNo never! Wonderful chaps, used to give their mothers flowers and all that!â [/Stig O'Tracy] Ardanto said the police had "actively and proactively" followed up on all tipoffs, but needed media and public support in the hunt as well. Frustrated by the failure of his security forces and facing another blow to his efforts to lure new overseas investment into Indonesia, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono this week urged the powerful military to become more involved in the hunt. The army's feared âThoifah Muqatilahâ? Thatâs too much bother to pronounce. Iâll just stick with âbuncha terrorist @ssholes.â While police said the bombers may be part of a "new generation" of bombers who could pass unrecognised, Jones said the group would probably be a "mix of the new and a mix of the old professionals". They were on Saturday hunting seven men in East Java, four in Central Java and five in Banten, south of Jakarta, who belonged to a hard-line "Banten Ring" cell with links to 2002 Bali bomb commander Imam Samudra, who is on death row in Denpasar with two other ringleaders. âImam Samudraâ Sorta highlights the problem, donât it. Arenât most priests convicted of pedophilia or murder usually excommunicated? Continuing to refer to a convicted terrorist murderer with an honorific indicating âHoly Manâ is a dead giveaway. The Banten five included Aprianto and Ikhwan Fauzi, who were both arrested in November 2002 for attempting to throw leftover explosives from the Bali bombings into a river. Police also were looking for their friend Pujata, although sources said he was unlikely to be directly involved because he had refused to shelter Azahari after the embassy attacks because he had only just been released from jail. Police had also taken into custody one man in the East Java capital Surabaya, and another in Palu, central Sulawesi, where Muslim-Christian bloodletting had raged for years. The Palu suspect was detained during a sweep of incoming aircraft which revealed he did not have any identity papers. But police said it was unlikely to be the militant founder of the Banten Ring, Kang Jaja, who has been hiding out in the area for several years. A Detachment 88" source said police close to catching Noordin, despite the latest setback, and believed they were only hours behind him. "We are very close," he said. "But at the moment we want to make him comfortable that he has escaped." Job well done. Noordin appears to be quite comfortably ensconced in a non-jail type of environment. Do all those bribes salve your conscience? Yudhoyono needs to take a close look at the financial impact of Bali's tourism industry being taken off-line for yet another even longer interval. It is only fitting that foreign investment is being withheld in the face of such pandering. The reduction of Bashir's sentence and Yudhoyono's refusal to outlaw JI strictly on the basis of what it's name means reduces much of his country's efforts to lip service and nothing else. |
| Posted by:Zenster |