Indonesia's vaunted "deradicalisation programme" aimed at bringing terrorists back into mainstream Islam has been exposed as a myth by recent arrests of re-offenders, analysts and police said. Senior police now acknowledge that no such programme exists and are issuing increasingly stark warnings that, on the contrary, the mainly Muslim country's prisons are at risk of becoming schools of violent jihad.The final straw appears to have been the re-arrest Wednesday of Abdullah Sunata, 32, on suspicion of plotting attacks on the Danish embassy and a police parade. He was released from jail last year for good behaviour after serving only a fraction of a seven-year sentence for his role in a 2004 attack on the Australian embassy, which killed 10 people.
One of Sunata's alleged accomplices arrested on the same day last week had also been jailed for the embassy attack, while a third who was killed by police was a former soldier who had been radicalised in prison while serving time for smuggling.
Other recent examples include bomb-maker Bagus Budi Pranoto -- also jailed over the embassy truck bombing, he was released after just four years only to be re-arrested over last year's suicide attacks on luxury hotels in Jakarta.
Within months of Sunata's release, he was allegedly back on the jihadist war path, plotting attacks and helping to organise a new terror cell dubbed "Al-Qaeda in Aceh" under the leadership of Jemaah Islamiyah militant Dulmatin. Police discovered the cell in February and killed Dulmatin in March.
National police spokesman Edward Aritonang said Sunata's case was further evidence that Indonesia's prisons, far from helping to rehabilitate terrorists, risked turning into terrorist "schools". It is time to look at a "new system or method, so the counselling for prisoners truly works and prisons don't become schools" of radicalisation, he said.
Hundreds of terrorists have been convicted, jailed and released since Indonesia was shaken by the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people, mostly Western tourists. With rare exceptions -- notably three of the Bali bombers who were executed in 2008 -- most have been given lenient sentences and even financial help to find jobs and reintegrate into moderate Indonesian society.
Counter-terrorism squad chief Colonel Tito Karnavian complains that the notoriously corrupt correction system effectively provides extremists a sanctuary to preach, recruit and plot. "In prison they can convene, sit and discuss freely and safely, secured by the government," he told reporters earlier this month, adding that Indonesia had "no systematic mechanism" for rehabilitation. "They are able to survive, not only survive but collaborate... We need quite a big budget for prevention and rehabilitation, not only repression."
Recognising the danger, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has ordered the creation of a national counter-terrorism body, focusing on prevention and rehabilitation, which will report directly to him. But Karnavian warned that an "extra-judicial body" would be "prone to be politicised" -- a possible reference to Islamic parties in the ruling coalition -- and said police should remain in charge of all counter-terrorism efforts. "As long as the radical ideology is growing and extremism is increasing we have a very huge reservoir for would-be terrorists or suicide bombers," he said.
Noor Huda Ismail, a former extremist who now works directly with terrorist prisoners to bring them back into moderate society, said Indonesia had never had a proper deradicalisation plan. "All they've done so far is be nice with the terrorists in order to squeeze information from them," he told AFP.
The Al-Qaeda in Aceh group's chief alleged ideologue, Aman Abdurrahman, was initially arrested over his involvement in a bomb-making cell back in 2004 and was released in 2008. Analysts who visited him in jail during that period said his prison guards, rather than working to deradicalise him, didn't even know who he was and made no effort to stop him holding "study sessions" with other terrorist detainees. Like Sunata, Abdurrahman is now back behind bars.