Two French nationals suspected of belonging to an international terror group have been arrested by Pakistan’s security services, French and Pakistani sources said on Thursday.
The two are suspected of being part of the group responsible for the bloody attacks in Bali in 2002 that killed 202 people, the worst terror attack in Indonesia, according to Pakistani security officials, who requested anonymity.
The terror group is the one allegedly connected to Indonesian Umar Patek, who was himself arrested recently in Pakistan.
The arrests were confirmed in Paris by two sources close to the French intelligence services, adding that they had been detained several weeks ago.
France has asked the Pakistani authorities for permission to visit the detainees, an official at the French embassy in Islamabad said.
Senior Indonesian and Pakistani officials announced late last month that Patek had been taken into Pakistani custody.
Indonesian counter-terrorism police had been tracking Patek for years. One of the most wanted Islamic extremists in Southeast Asia, he had a US$1 million bounty on his head under the US government’s “Rewards for Justice” program.
Born in 1970, he was the alleged field coordinator for the massive explosions that flattened nightclubs on Bali and placed mainly Muslim Indonesia on the front lines of the global battle against Islamic militancy.
Patek is a suspected member of al-Qaeda-linked Southeast Asian terror network Jemaah Islamiyah, blamed for a series of deadly bombings targeting Christians and Westerners in Indonesia dating back to 1999.
Indonesian authorities had believed he was hiding among Islamic rebels in the southern Philippines. The International Crisis Group think tank reported in 2008 that he had become the commander of foreign jihadists there.
Patek reportedly returned to Indonesia early last year to join a new militant group being set up in Aceh Province by another alleged Bali ringleader, Dulmatin.
Dulmatin was killed during an Indonesian police raid in March last year, and Patek disappeared from the radar.
Jemaah Islamiyah’s goal is to unite Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and the southern Philippines in an Islamic state governed by a strict interpretation of Shariah law similar to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
The group has carried out more than 50 bombings in Indonesia that have claimed hundreds of lives, mainly Muslims, since April 1999.
The last significant bombing in Indonesia — the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country — was carried out by two suicide attackers, who killed seven people at two luxurious Jakarta hotels in July 2009.
It was believed to be the work of Malaysian terror mastermind Noordin Mohammad Top, who led a Jemaah Islamiyah splinter group. Top was killed in September 2009.
Pakistan has also been hit by a wave of terror attacks in recent years with more than 4,000 people killed in suicide and bomb attacks since government forces launched an offensive against militants in a mosque in Islamabad in 2007.
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