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| Southeast Asia |
| Fugitive Malaysian heads (new) regional jihad group: police chief |
| 2006-01-30 |
| Fugitive Malaysian militant Noordin Mohammad Top has declared himself the leader of a previously unknown regional extremist group, Indonesia's police chief reportedly said on Monday. General Sutanto said Noordin, accused of masterminding a string of deadly attacks in Indonesia which have left hundreds dead, named himself head of "Tandzim Qoedatul Jihad", the Detikcom online news service reported. He declared himself chief of the "Malay" regional group after his compatriot Azahari Husin, a master bombmaker, was killed by police during a raid on his hideout in East Java last November, the police chief said. Sutanto, who was speaking to lawmakers, said the information came to light after police interviewed several suspects and witnesses after last October's triple suicide bombing on Bali island, which killed 20 bystanders. Police have so far arrested 11 suspects, mostly from Central Java province, in connection with the latest Bali suicide attacks, all of them close to Top, Sutanto said. He gave no further details of the organisation. Azahari and Noordin were key leaders of the Al Qaeda-linked regional terrorist network Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), but experts have said they believed the pair had split to create an even more hardline group. Sidney Jones from the International Crisis Group told AFP that she had not heard of the group's title. "But it's been clear for a while that Noordin and the bombers have split in some way from JI and this is the first indication that I've seen that the split may actually have become formal," she said. JI's most deadly attack was its bombings on Bali in October 2002, which killed 202 mostly western holidaymakers. A nice titbit to work into my new novel. Noordin is already a character in it. |
| Posted by:phil_b |
| #2 Thanks Dan. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2006-01-30 03:43 |
| #1 "Tandzim Qoedatul Jihad" is a very, very bad Romanization of Tanzeem Qaedat al-Jihad or the Army of the Base/Foundation of Jihad. This fits with what we know about Top and the late Azahari heading up the international wing of JI while the more domestic types sit things out until they're reorganized. |
| Posted by: Dan Darling 2006-01-30 02:51 |