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| Southeast Asia |
| JI leadership still at large |
| 2006-03-23 |
| Indonesia's war on terror is not close to being won and even the capture or death of senior militant Noordin Top will make little difference to the threat of more attacks, one of the country's most senior counter-terrorist officers has warned. Noordin, Indonesia's most wanted man, blamed for the recent Bali bombings, was just one of a number of seasoned terrorists being hunted by authorities across Asia, Colonel Petrus Reinhard Golose said. Noordin, said to be a skilled recruiter of would-be suicide bombers, headed only a militant offshoot of the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah terror network, he said. "Noordin, he is dangerous, but we have also others who are also very dangerous," Golose said. "Noordin is only Asykari, he does not to belong to Markazi, the JI organisation. "Asykari is like a special force, he is not controlled right now. "He declared himself that he is the representative of al-Qaeda but (we) have also others more dangerous." Still at large and believed to be hiding out in the relatively lawless southern Philippines was expert JI bomb-maker Dulmatin, who has been on the run since 2002 and who has a $10 million bounty on his head posted by the US. Dulmatin is an Indonesian explosives and electronics expert who attended terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. He is believed to be a protege of 2002 Bali bombing mastermind Azahari Husin, who was shot dead by police in East Java last year after a three-year manhunt. Also at large, Golose warned, was the shadowy Zulkarnaen, who is suspected of being JI's new operations chief following the 2003 arrest in Thailand of top commander Hambali. "Even now, we don't let us say smell (Zulkarnaen) since the first Bali bombing," he said. JI also had a new and relatively young overall commander in Abu Dujana, 37, another veteran of the Afghan war against the Soviets. Dujana, Golose said, was a skilled bomber proficient also in small arms who replaced Abu Rusdan as the "emir" of JI. He graduated from the Afghanistan Mujahideen Military Academy in 1991. Although relatively young, Dujana had strong leadership qualities, Golose said. "From Australia, some of the ... observers for counter-terrorism, they say whenever I give a comment about Abu Dujana, they say he is too young," Golose said. But both Noordin and Azahari had reported back to Dujana following the 2003 attack on the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta, which killed 11 people as well as the bomber, he said. Golose said it was very difficult to determine who was actually in charge of various terror cells across South-East Asia because of their secretive nature and because their leaders like Noordin had learned to frequently switch tactics, confusing their police hunters. But he warned that the various cells had several skilled bomb-makers fully trained and ready to take over from the slain Azahari. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |