Indonesian police have arrested the alleged leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, the south-east Asian terror group blamed for the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings and a series of other attacks in recent years, a spokesman said today.
Abu Dujana, Indonesia’s most-wanted Islamic militant, was detained along with seven other suspected terrorists in raids on the country’s main island of Java over the weekend, said police spokesman Sisno Adiwinoto.
The capture of Dujana, an Afghan-trained militant who police say once had links with al-Qaida, is a major victory in the fight against terrorism in Indonesia, a secular nation with the world’s largest Muslim population.
“With this arrest we have successfully stopped acts of terrorism in the future,” said Mr Adiwinoto. “He was a key figure in the terrorist network in Indonesia.” Mr Adiwinoto said Dujana, 37, was being held at undisclosed location.
Police confirmed his identity using dental and DNA samples, he said.
Under the country’s anti-terror law, police can hold a suspect for several weeks without charging them. Jemaah Islamiyah members have been blamed for four attacks on western targets in Indonesia in recent years, including the Bali nightclub attacks that killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists and a 2003 suicide blast at a hotel.
The group, which police say received funds and direction from al-Qaida in the early 2000s, has also been blamed for attacks in the Philippines, while Malaysia and Singapore have arrested several dozen alleged members in recent years.
Adiwinoto said Dujana played a major role in “almost all” the bombings in Indonesia.
“It is a very significant arrest. It is a major triumph for police,” said leading Jemaah Islamiyah analyst Sidney Jones. “If he will talk, he will be able to give police absolutely rock solid data about everything there is to know about JI.”
Mr Adiwinoto said Dujana’s good Arabic language skills meant he forged close ties with al-Qaida commanders in Afghanistan in the late 1980s and 1990s and - like scores of other militants - personally met Osama bin Laden. “He can assemble bombs and he can recruit members, so he is more important than” other key terror suspects Noordin Top, who remains at large, and Azahari bin Husin, who was shot and killed in a raid in 2005, he said.
Analysts say scores of arrests and raids have weakened Jemaah Islamiyah, and that it is now splintered into several cells. They say most of its estimated 1,000 members do not agree that bombing “soft” civilian target helps the group in its aim of implementing an Islamic state in Indonesia.
The last major terrorist attack in Indonesia was in 2005.
Police say Dujana, who like most of the hardcore members of Jemaah Islamiyah fled to Malaysia in the 1990s to avoid a crackdown by former dictator Suharto, become head of Jemaah Islamiyah four years ago.
Abu Rusdan, the man police say Dujana replaced as head of Jemaah Islamiyah, was arrested in 2003 and sentenced to three-and-a-half years in jail for hiding one of the militants convicted in the Bali blasts.
Indonesia has not made membership of Jemaah Islamiyah a criminal offence.