Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Jakarta (Agenzia Fides) – The Indonesian police have announced that the Jemaah Islamiyah is behind the kamikaze attacks that took place in Jakarta during the night this past July 16-17, causing 8 deaths and over 60 wounded. The two attacks were on two luxury hotels in Jakarta, the Marriott and the Ritz-Carlton, which often host businessmen from all over the world.
Following the first few days of investigations the Indonesian inspectors have focused their work on the dissident group Jemaah Islamiyah, the terrorist network linked to Al Qaeda, responsible for the attacks on Jakarta and Bali in past years and that the Indonesian government thought had successfully weakened through the arrests and indictments of several soldiers and terrorists.
The group responsible for the attacks is led by Noordin Mohammad Top, a Malaysian who is on the international most-wanted list of terrorists. The Malaysian has been defined by the FBI as “an expert in explosives, fundraising, and recruiting terrorists” and since 2006 he has been at the forefront of a dissident group that has broken off from the rest of the organization.
The Indonesian authorities maintain that the Malaysian was also responsible for organizing the attacks in Bali in October 2002, along with the car-bombing in front of the same Marriott in August 2003.
The Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), the Islamic radicalist network active in southeast Asia, was led by Abu Bakar Bashir, an Indonesian religious, principal of a Koran school in Java, who was sentenced in 2003 to four years of confinement for treason and subversion (a sentence later canceled in 2006). The organization, which is considered responsible for several attacks and homicides, according to observers is today suffering internal tensions between a more traditionalist side in favor of strengthening what has been gained up until now, and a more radical faction that maintains that the use of violence is not only useful, but necessary. Among the radicalists is the Malaysian Noordin Mohammad Top.
The bloodshed in Jakarta has been described as “a serious attack on national security,” by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, recently elected for a second term. The president has denounced any subversive campaign to destabilize the nation, after all the efforts that have been made towards democracy in recent years. (PA) (Agenzia Fides 20/7/2009)
