Prisons, recruiting key in terror fight: Indonesia

JAKARTA, Oct 11: Indonesia's success in combating Islamic militants has not removed the threat of attacks and the focus should be on stifling new recruitment and controlling activities in prisons, according to a top security official.

Ansyaad Mbai, the head of Indonesia's counter-terrorism board, said Jakarta should not rest on its laurels despite more than 300 arrests in recent years, including several key figures.

''This success, of course, doesn't mean we have succeeded to stop terrorists at all,'' Mr Mbai told foreign correspondents during a panel discussion yesterday.

He said the threat remained ''real and present'', although it could not be met merely by using blunt force.

''The harder the physical pressure brought to bear upon them the more militant the terrorists become.'' In a bid to prevent new radicals being recruited to potentially launch more attacks, Mbai said a ''de-radicalisation'' programme had been launched using the media that also tries to enlist militants opposed to violent methods.

He declined to go into specific details of the programme, pointing to sensitivity for some militants should they be seen to be cooperating with authorities.

Most Indonesian Muslims are moderate, but there has been an increasingly vocal radical element in recent years, with small, violent groups staging a series of bomb attacks against Western and other targets since the start of the decade.

The biggest was in Bali four years ago, when 202 people, most of them foreign tourists, were killed.

Mr Mbai said Indonesia needed to curb the activities of militants jailed for terrorism offences.

''We can see, for instance, in our prisons there is a problem.'' Police revealed earlier this year that Imam Samudra, a man on death row for the 2002 Bali bombings, had used a laptop in his prison cell to chat via the Internet with co-conspirators about fund-raising for attacks.

Sidney Jones, an expert on militant Islamic organisations, also said there should be much stricter controls on prisons.

She said militants were able to compile material in prison and pass them to commercial publishers, including a publication by Samudra with a print run of 12,000.

TRANSLATING ARABIC MATERIAL

Jones, from the International Crisis Group, said police campaigns had led to the fragmentation of some militant groups, with some small cells now operating solo.

She said the mainstream of the Jemaah Islamiah network, a militant group blamed for bombings in Bali and the Indonesian capital, has redefined its aims. The group's focus now was not militant attacks, although military training was still important.

Analysts say that JI's main membership were worried recent bombings had been counterproductive and had also killed Muslims.

Jones said a pro-bombing wing of the group led by Noordin Top, suspected of being behind the Bali bombings and the subject of a huge manhunt, was probably ''not in such good shape'' but still capable of recruiting.

Jones said another theme in Indonesia was the spread of manuals and militant ideological texts from the West Asia.

She said, however, it was important not to overstate the threat of new attacks.

''I think it (the terrorist threat) is less than it was three years ago, or even two years ago.''

REUTERS