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Asia's most wanted turn more extremist: expert

Two fugitive Malaysians wanted for deadly bombings in Indonesia appear to be splitting from the extremist Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) group to form an even more hardline force, an expert said yesterday.

Azahari Husin and Noordin Mohammad Top are two of Asia's most wanted men and linked to JI, the group blamed for the Bali bombings which killed 202 people three years ago, and other attacks on a Jakarta hotel and the Australian embassy in the Indonesian capital.

"But there's some indication that those two are in the process of creating their own force," Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group think tank told the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in a speech last month.

"The immediate danger to foreign targets unquestionably comes from the two Malaysians and their followers," she said, according to a text of the speech.

In an interview yesterday, Jones said that "there's got to be a strong suspicion" that Azahari and Noordin were behind Saturday's bombings that killed at least 19 people at restaurants on Bali.

Few other groups would be able to recruit and deploy suicide bombers, said the Jakarta-based analyst.

Jones said in her speech that it has been clear since the 2003 attack on Jakarta's JW Marriott hotel, in which 12 people died, that Azahari and Noordin had been operating outside the command structure of JI, using ad hoc networks of personal contacts from both within JI and outside it.

"Now there is some indication, but information is still sketchy, that these ad hoc arrangements may be morphing as a more structured organization" known as a "combat unit," she said in the speech.

Jones, who has written numerous studies on JI and extremism in Indonesia, said the group has been seriously hurt by the arrest of about 125 of its members.

The arrests prompted "a decision to more formally distance the organization as a whole from the actions of its most hardline members, exemplified by the two Malaysian nationals," she said in the speech.

Unlike JI, which professes the goal of forming an Islamic state, Azahari's followers are simply focussed on avenging the deaths of Muslims around the world by striking at the US and its "lackeys," Jones said yesterday.

Most of the dead in the 2002 Bali bombings were foreigners. But only one of 12 people killed in the Marriott attack was a foreigner, and all 10 killed outside the embassy were Indonesian. In the latest Bali attacks, 14 Indonesians died.

Jones said that the bombers do not justify the killing of Indonesians and may have attacked Bali a second time out of an assumption that they would be more likely to kill foreigners.

Despite annual bombings since the first Bali tragedy, Jones said security in Indonesia has improved and even if Azahari and Noordin form their own group, "I think the capacity to pull off large spectacular actions is probably weakened."

But she said smaller attacks could continue.

"It would be foolhardy to suggest we aren't going to see any more attacks," she said.

Jones said security could be improved on the ferry system linking Bali with neighboring Java island, and on the bus system, but ultimately a determined suicide bomber could not be stopped.

"What are you going to do, cordon off the island?" she asked.

Jones said it remains a mystery why Azahari and Noordin have not been caught, although police have come close.

"But you could say the same about why has Osama bin Laden not been captured," she said referring to the al-Qaeda chief. Authorities say there are some links between JI and al-Qaeda.

"I think that it's only a matter of time before these people are caught," Jones said.

Around the middle of last year, some JI leaders gave permission for members to inform on the Malaysian fugitives if, for example, they had knowledge of where they were, Jones wrote in her speech.

The speech warned that even though JI members may oppose the bombing of Western targets, they still seek to establish an Islamic state in Indonesia and believe they need a military capacity.

Even with the capture of Azahari and Noordin, it would be a mistake to think there will be no more attacks, she said.
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