Indonesia has detained a major member of an al-Qaida-linked cell

[ASEAN NOW Content Team]

 

According to Indonesia police, an al-Qaida-linked gang that has been responsible for a spate of previous bombs in the country has been captured by the country's elite counterterrorism squad.

Abu Rusdan was apprehended late Friday in Bekasi, outside Jakarta, along with three other alleged Jemaah Islamiyah members, said to police spokesman Ahmad Ramadhan.

Ramadhan informed the Associated Press, "He is currently known to be engaged within the unlawful Jemaah Islamiyah network's leadership."

 

Rusdan is regarded by Indonesian police as a prominent player in the Jemaah Islamiyah, which the US has labelled as a terrorist organisation.
The enigmatic Southeast Asian network is largely blamed for assaults in the Philippines and Indonesia, including the bombings that killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists, on the Indonesian resort island of Bali in 2002.

 

The arrests, according to Ramadhan, are part of a bigger statewide campaign on the organisation.
Following information that the gang was recruiting and training new members in Indonesia, police are still on the lookout for other suspected members.

Rusdan, 61, was born in Central Java and sentenced to prison in 2003 for hiding Ali Ghufron, a militant ultimately convicted and executed for the Bali attacks.

 

Rusdan traversed Indonesia after his release from prison in 2006, giving speeches and impassioned sermons that earned tens of thousands of views on YouTube.
He extolled Afghanistan as the "home of jihad" in one recorded speech, the nation where he had previously trained with other militant groups.

In the last several weeks, Indonesia's police counterterrorism team, Densus 88, has apprehended 53 alleged Jemaah members across 11 provinces.

The organisation was banned by an Indonesian court in 2008, and the terrorist network has been weakened by a continuous crackdown by the country's security services, with cooperation from the US and Australia.

 

Following the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, Wawan Hari Purwanto, a spokesman for Indonesia's National Intelligence Agency, said in a video statement earlier this month that officials have increased their efforts at early detection and prevention, "particularly toward terrorist groups that have links to the Taliban's ideology and networks."