Two bombs exploded Saturday at a busy market in central Indonesia, killing at least 22 people and wounding 40 others in a volatile area marred by years of inter-religious fighting, Vice President Jusuf Kalla said.

The blasts occurred in the morning at a market in Sulawesi island’s Christian-dominated town of Tentena, said Police Maj. Riky Naldo, the deputy chief of police in nearby Poso town. More than 90 percent of Indonesia’s 210 million people are Muslims.

Two policemen were among the wounded, Naldo said

.

Read more…

The alleged leader of a militant Islamic group was sentenced Thursday to 2 1/2 years in prison for conspiracy in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people but was cleared of more serious charges. The United States and Australia criticized the sentence.

A five-judge panel cleared Abu Bakar Bashir of allegations that as head of the al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah group he planned the 2003 suicide bombing of the J.W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta that killed 12 people and that he incited his followers to launch terrorist attacks.

The 66-year-old preacher could be released from prison by October 2006 with time already served in prison taken into account. He has been in jail since April.

Read more…

From the Sydney Morning Herald :

Radical Islamic groups best known for smashing bars and violent support of the jailed cleric Abu Bakar Bashir have sent large contingents of their members to Aceh with funding provided by the Indonesian Government.

At Banda Aceh’s airport, trucks with supplies to be ferried to disaster-struck areas by US Navy helicopters have been unloaded by members of Bashir’s group, the MMI, including one man proudly wearing an Osama bin Laden T-shirt.

Members of the FPI (Islamic Defenders Front), famous for its attacks on nightspots in Jakarta, are now living in Banda Aceh in tents provided by the army and the Ministry of Social Affairs.

The head of the FPI contingent, Hilmy Bakar Almascaty, said about 250 members had come to Aceh with tickets provided by the Government; 800 more on board an Indonesian warship would help clean up the devastated province.

“FPI is not only an organisation that destroys bars and discos, it has a humanitarian side as well that the media is not happy to expose,” Dr Almascaty said.

Early yesterday 50 of his troops wearing FPI shirts went through a series of military drills before heading off to the city to help collect corpses still not recovered from the millions of tonnes of rubble.

Dr Almascaty said his group had held discussions with the head of the army, General Ryamizard Ryacudu, the Defence Minister, Juwono Sudarsono and the Vice-President, Jusuf Kalla, and had come to Aceh with the full backing of the Government.

He said his members were in Aceh to help, although the army in the past has often been accused of using Islamic groups to fight its battles, especially in divided communities like Aceh.

Dr Almascaty agreed that, as well as helping gather corpses and clean up mosques, the FPI had come to play another role.

He said he was determined to ensure the arrival of foreign soldiers and aid workers did not lead to a breakdown in the system of syariah, or Islamic law, which has been in nominal operation in Aceh for several years.

“Nominal” is the keyword here, rather than “actual”. It’s never actually been practiced by the majority.

“If anyone who comes here does not respect the syariah law, traditions and constitution, we must give them a warning and then we must attack,” he said.

Dr Almascaty said his group was co-ordinating with MMI and with another hardline group banned in many countries, Hizbut Tharir, in a plan to curtail Western influence.
[…]
The head of the MMI contingent, Salman al Furizi, said his group of 50 young men from central Java had flown to Banda Aceh on a military aircraft. He was prepared to put aside his vehement opposition to the US because of the help it was providing.

“We have to understand this is a disaster, so we are not talking about other problems,” he said.

Dr Almascaty also welcomed the Americans and other traditional enemies of his group. “At the moment they have come as an angel,” he said. “We don’t know about tomorrow.”

I can assure Dr Almascaty that in view of his words, in Australia the feeling is entirely mutual.

From The Australian :

Indonesia has promised Australia it will boost security in the war-torn province of Aceh amid fears aid workers at the centre of the world’s tsunami humanitarian mission may be caught in the crossfire of the separatist struggle.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said yesterday there would be growing concerns for safety in the coming months as Australians helped rebuild the devastated western Sumatran coast.

Fuelling the volatility of the region, fundamental Islamic activists are also flooding into the region in a bid to guard against what they regard as dangerous Western influences.
[…]
Indonesian sources say the chief concerns for the safety of aid workers and unarmed defence personnel are Free Aceh Movement (GAM) separatists looking for publicity, criminal gangs attached to GAM, and Islamic fundamentalists concerned about the influx of Westerners. One hardline Islamic group took aim yesterday at an Australian Catholic charity, Father Chris Riley’s Youth off the Streets, planning to set up an orphanage in tsunami-ravaged Aceh, warning it not to try to convert Muslim children.

Chief of the radical Islamic Defenders Front, Hilmy Bakar Almascaty, warned the group to stick purely to humanitarian work in Aceh — the only Indonesian province to have fully implemented Muslim sharia law.

Mr Downer said while it was “political suicide” for Islamist militants to attack now, there would be concerns for Australians as the program dragged on. “The assessments of our agencies is that it is very unlikely that Islamists groups would commit acts of violence against people providing humanitarian aid simply because it would be an act which would be enormously unpopular in Indonesia, would set their cause back a very long way, even if it was some sort of an attack on foreigners,” he said.

Almost as unpopular as the attack on Bali. And more so than 9/11, the Jakarta Hyatt and Embassy bombings. Oh wait, they did those anyway…

Michel Brugiere, director of Medecins du Monde, or Doctors of the World, said that “given the context of the area where we are operating, we have very strict security measures in place”. He said: “Our teams are told that they should not fly in American army helicopters, since we’re concerned that they could be a particular target.”

AFP via Channel News Asia: Indonesian cleric Bashir gets October date for terrorism trial [Update to this post.]

JAKARTA: Indonesian Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir will go on trial on October 28 over a deadly hotel bombing and could face the death penalty if convicted on terrorism charges, a court official said Monday.

Yunda Handi, a clerk at South Jakarta district court, said the long-awaited trial would be held in a special court convened in a building capable of accommodating security personnel, press and Bashir's supporters.

Bashir, 66, has been accused of heading the Al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah terror group and of involvement in the suicide bombing of Jakarta's US-franchise Marriott hotel that killed 12 people on August 5, 2003.

He will also face charges related to the Bali bombings of October 2002 in which 202 people, including 88 Australians were killed.

Remember.

REUTERS: Indonesia Orders Pirates, Sea Terrorists Shot on Sight

Indonesia’s naval chief has ordered his commanders to shoot dead armed terrorists or pirates operating in key waterways including the busy Strait of Malacca, which carries a third of world trade.

Navy Chief of Staff, Bernard Kent Sondakh, would also meet soon with his counterparts from Malaysia and Singapore to seek ways to increase joint patrols in the Strait, officials said on Friday.

The Malacca Strait is a 500-mile channel through which about 50,000 commercial vessels pass each year, including ships ferrying 80 percent of Japan’s oil needs.

“In the future, every thief or terrorist at sea has to be shot dead and this should be publicized by the mass media to teach a lesson,” Sondakh said in a statement.

The Jakarta Post:

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters): Malaysia is holding in detention six Indonesians caught returning from a Jemaah Islamiah militant training camp in the southern Philippines, a senior security official said on Saturday.

Jemaah Islamiah (JI), a Southeast Asian offshoot of al-Qaeda, was behind the Bali bombings in late 2002 and the suicide bomb attack on the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta last year.

Sydney Morning Herald/AFP:

Security forces recovered a bio-terror manual and traces of possible biological weapons in a raid on a Jemaah Islamiah hideout in the southern Philippine city of Cotabato, the army said today.

Local police said up to eight local and foreign JI suspects escaped yesterday's raid in central Cotabato but left behind what vice chief of staff Lieutenant General Rodolfo Garcia described as possible residues of a "tetanus virus-carrying chemical".

A "bio-terror manual" was also recovered, Garcia said over ABS-CBN television.

The raid on a Cotabato apartment unit was launched a day after the visit to Manila of US President George W Bush and more than two weeks after the arrest in Cotabato of Indonesian Taufiq Rifqi, described by the Filipino authorities as the number-two man of JI.

From News.com.au:

The last of the principal Bali bombers was sentenced to death yesterday - almost exactly a year after the horror of the terrorist blasts - effectively ending a saga of hatred that has echoed throughout Australia.

Attack operations commander Mukhlas, alias Ali Ghufron, was the mastermind of the destruction on October 12 last year.

After planning the attacks, he retreated to east Java where he listened with joy to news that the bombs had killed and maimed hundreds of Westerners. Since his arrest 10 months ago, he has shown little remorse for the Kuta blasts, which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.

Chief judge Cokorda Rai Suamba said Mukhlas had been "legally and convincingly proven guilty of having, with others, planned an act of terrorism and also of being in illegal possession of explosives - we punish the defendant with the death sentence".

Mukhlas nodded and soon after stood and shouted "Allah akbar", jumping with arms and legs spread as he rushed to hug his lawyers, a grin spread across his face.

Ever since last week when President Bush announced the capture of an al-Qaeda operative named Riduan Isamuddin who used the nom de guerre of Hanbali or Hambali (depending on one's source), there has been a media frenzy, with many press outlets following Time Magazine in declaring him "the bin Laden of Southeast Asia."

Yet who is Hanbali? Why does his capture mean so much for Southeast Asia, the so-called "second front" in the war on terror? And if he's out of the picture, who's left?

read the rest! »
 

While we're all concentrating on the blackout, news continues in the rest of the word. The Thai Government has handed Hambali over to the Americans, who have flown him out of the country:

While authorities are not willing to say exactly where Hambali is being held, tip-offs from local residents and intelligence sharing among several nations led to his capture, Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said on Friday.

Also known as Riduan Isamuddin, Hambali is the operations chief of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terror group and the suspected mastermind behind a spate of bombings in Southeast Asia and elsewhere, among them the October 2002 Bali blasts.

Full story at CNN.

Welcome! Our goal is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from the global War on Terror that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday. Today's "Winds of War" is brought to you by Dan Darling of Regnum Crucis.

TOP TOPICS

• Indian counter-terrorism expert K. P. S. Gill recently claimed that al-Qaeda was run by a "brain trust" of Wahhabi clerics who provide the ideological underpinnings for its operations. The ever-valuable Fred Pruitt over at Rantburg has done some digging, and he appears to have uncovered at least some of it - and see also here.

• Yoni Fighel and Moshe Marzouk over at ICT have their own interpretation on how al-Qaeda operates on the Internet and exploits unfortunate accidents like the recent plane crash in Kenya to further its cause. Ray at Pseudorandom Thoughts also has an excellent link to WIRED's feature: "Forums Point the Way to Jihad?" As you already knew long ago, if you read LGF.

• Monday's Winds of War talked about SAM (Surface-to-Air Missile) warnings. Now we know why. Fresh from yesterday's sting operation, two Pakistanis are being held in Seattle after one of their names showed up on the US terrorist watch list.

Other Topics Today Include: Where's Saddam - an idea; Iraq and Iran updates; a missile smuggling sting operation; an al-Qaeda sleeper in NYC arrested; a bloody day in Afghanistan; Morocco's progress against the Salafi Jihad; shoot-outs in Saudi Arabia, Jemaah Islamiyyah and the Mariott hotel bombing in Jakarta; Muslim condemnation of the Jakarta bombing in Indonesia; Amrozi to get the death penalty; Harold Keke's surrender; another Hamburg cell trial in Germany; Fidel Castro reaffirmed as dictator of Cuba; and Saddam's magical statues.
 

Winds of Change.NET Regional Briefings run on Tuesdays & Wednesdays, and sometimes Fridays too. This Regional Briefing focuses on South-SE Asia, courtesy of Robi Sen.

• India continues to claim that Pakistan supports terrorist camps. The Strategypage has more on this topic, and what's going on in between India and Pakistan on a day to day basis. And have we mentioned the wall India is building in Kashmir?

• JK: Winds of Change.NET explains what's at stake politically in Kashmir, from both India and Pakistan's point of view. Not to mention the nuclear stakes involved.

Other Topics Today Include: Sharon in India; Developments in and around Kashmir; Musharraf speaks out against extremism; Islamic terrorism throughout SE Asia, from Bangladesh to the Phillipines; and a superb book that offers insights into the current War on Terror.

read the rest! »

From CNN:

The blast occurred just before 1 p.m. (0600 GMT) on Tuesday, shattering scores of plate-glass windows all the way up to the top of the 33-floor luxury hotel.

Local radio reports quoted witnesses as saying at least four people had died in the blast.

AP:

JAKARTA, Indonesia - A bomb damaged a wall and shattered windows in Indonesia's Parliament building on Monday, just days after police arrested nine Islamic militants they said were planning fresh terror attacks.

No one was injured in the blast, the latest in a series of small bombings in the world's most populous Muslim nation since last year's devastating attacks on Bali island.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for Monday's bombing.

More...

CNN:

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thailand has stepped up security at international schools, Western-run businesses and tourist areas including beach resorts such as Pattaya, Phuket and Koh Samui after intelligence reports warned of possible suicide bombings in the region.

Police are also on high alert at the U.S., British and Australian embassies in the capital Bangkok, the second heightening of security this week, Australian Broadcasting Corp said in a radio report on Tuesday.

Full article...

BBC News:

One of the main suspects in last October's Bali bombings in Indonesia has been arrested, a senior official has said.

The man, called Idris, was captured during a three-day police operation which started on 12 June in the north Sumatran capital of Medan.

The announcement came as prosecutors demanded the death penalty for another of the bombing suspects - Amrozi bin Nurhasyim - usually referred to as Amrozi.

Full story »»

Under the guidance of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, of course. No surprise there. (See this previous TCP post.)

ABS-CBN News:

JAKARTA - A suspect in a deadly McDonald's restaurant bombing told a court Tuesday that he and other Indonesian Islamic militants had trained at a rebel camp in the southern Philippines.

Suriyadi Masud made the remarks at the trial of Abu Bakar Bashir, the alleged spiritual head of the regional al-Qaeda linked terror group Jemaah Islamiyah.

His testimony further confirms the regional nature of terrorism in Southeast Asia, something highlighted during the investigation into last year's Bali bombings.

Full story »»

Channel News Asia:

Indonesian judges on Thursday ruled that the trial of key Bali bombing suspect Amrozi should continue.

Lawyers for the 40-year-old mechanic had argued that the charges were not accurate, and asked for the trial to be dismissed.

"All the objections by defence counsel can be declared unacceptable...the court decides to continue with the trial," Judge I Made Karna Parna told the court.

Amrozi faces the death penalty for buying explosive materials and a mini-van used to carry out the attacks.

President Megawati Sukarnoputri has imposed martial law on Aceh province, home of the rebel Free Aceh Movement. This after the breakdown of peace talks in Tokyo.

While there may be no direct link here to America's War on Terror, Indonesia is a Muslim country where radical groups are known to operate. The Free Aceh Movement appears to base parts of its ideology on Islam and, while there's no proof whatever that they are linked to any known international terrorist group, the situation in Indonesia probably bears watching.