Terrorists go back to school in Indonesia
By Sara Schonhardt
SEMARANG, Java, Indonesia - From behind secure prison walls, convicted
terrorist Abdul Aziz seems harmless, if not playful. The 34-year-old inmate is
one of five convicted terrorists now serving time at Kedung Pane prison for
their role in plotting the 2005 Bali bombing, which killed 23 people and
injured over 120 others.
At the time, their convictions were seen as a significant step in Indonesia's
internationally lauded counter-terrorism campaign. But Aziz and others could
soon be up for parole, and there are questions as to how harmless they would be
back on Indonesia's streets.
Aziz said in an interview with Asia Times Online that he has personally
re-evaluated the means for achieving jihad, the struggle
required of practicing Muslims to preserve Islam. However, he admits to
"feeling more anger" towards the state since officials denied him a parole
opportunity earlier this year.
Aziz recently participated in a five-day conflict-management program piloted by
a partnership of non-governmental organizations that aims to disengage
terrorists from the ideological thinking that promotes the use of violence. The
program, headed by Search for Common Ground (SCG), a conflict transformation
organization that receives the bulk of its funding from European governments,
attempts to fill a hole in Indonesia's prison system.
Until now, de-radicalization programs in Indonesia's prisons have been mainly
personal initiatives led by police who work to befriend radical inmates or win
them over through money donations made to their families. The SCG group of
trainers leading the program, which they say emphasizes "disengagement" rather
than "de-radicalization", hopes to introduce new ways of thinking to convicted
terrorists.
While Aziz has openly soul-searched about his jihadi past, it's not clear that
others under rehabilitation buy into SCG's message. The program's trainers say
they realize its shortcomings: participation is voluntary, but at Semarang
guards goaded the inmates into attending. Rehabilitation, however, is an
important back story to Indonesia's ongoing counter-terrorism campaign.
"As long as [de-radicalization] activities are running, by a group or even by
random personal initiative, people need those activities," said Nasir Abas, a
former terrorist now advising police and universities on de-radicalization
measures. He said radical ideology was at the root of Indonesia's terrorism
problem and that efforts to counter such thinking are key to rehabilitating
terrorists.
The government has rounded up scores of suspects since the bombing attacks on
two Jakarta-based luxury hotels last year, but is now confronted with how to
rehabilitate detainees, including those who will eventually be paroled. The
state has argued that all terrorists require reform, even those who have
received life sentences, otherwise they may continue spreading radical ideas
from jail.
Some may simply be beyond reform. Abdullah Sunata, who was arrested in late
June for allegedly plotting to attack the Danish Embassy and a police parade
scheduled for early July, was offered various monetary incentives to cooperate
with police. He had returned to terrorist activities after serving a few years
in jail, though he didn't participate in a formal de-radicalization program
during his previous imprisonment.
Some security analysts say harsher sentences are needed. But when the men
accused of masterminding the 2002 Bali bombing that killed over 200 people were
executed, their arguments were met with rebuttals that state-conducted killings
could set off new waves of terrorism and violence. Now, as the prison
population of terror suspects bulges, the state has grudgingly acknowledged
that lower-ranking former operatives require reform as much as punishment.
Detachment 88, the country's US- and Australia-trained counter-terrorism unit,
has said that the government needs to focus more attention on places where
radical ideologies are spread, such as schools, prisons and publishing houses.
However, the police-led unit has come under growing criticism from rights
groups who believe in some instances police have used excessive and unnecessary
force in their operations to nab terror suspects.
Sitting back in a metal prison chair and tugging at his long wispy beard, Aziz
strikes a pose of absolute calm. This despite the eight-year prison sentence he
was given in September 2006 for harboring Noordin Mohammad Top, the mastermind
behind a series of bombings across the country that included the 2005 Bali
blast. Noordin was the most-wanted terror suspect in Southeast Asia when he was
killed by police in a firefight last October.
Aziz is a relative peon compared to cellmates like Abdul Ghoni, a
mujahideen-trained Afghan veteran who was convicted for constructing the bomb
used in the 2005 Bali attack. Though he does not believe that his sentence is
unfair, Aziz does not accept responsibility for the attack's deaths and
injuries.
His role was to design a website, anshar.net, for the radical group Jemaah
Islamiyah (JI), which has been accused of orchestrating both Bali bombings.
Aziz acknowledges that he took his orders from the organization's leaders, but
was not privy to the plans to target the Bali nightclub.
The website contained general information about jihad, but also included advice
on how and where to carry out terror attacks and served as a recruitment tool
for funds and supporters. Aziz, who rented a house for Noordin in his hometown
in central Java in mid-2005, said that after the Bali bombing he was ordered to
send a video to global television news station al-Jazeera warning that more
attacks were imminent.
Devout roots
Aziz was born to a family of devout Muslims who taught him to read the Koran at
an early age. As a teenager he studied different Islamic organizations,
including the pan-Islamic political grouping Hizb ut-Tahrir and Indonesia's
second-largest mass Muslim organization, Muhamadiyah.
He voluntarily joined JI because it taught its members to fight against the
enemies of Islam and at the time he believed that was the way to become a good
Muslim. However, his devotion wavered over the violent actions JI took in the
name of jihad.
In 1997, he stepped back to teach computer classes to high school students, but
returned to JI's fold after an acquaintance asked him during an Islamic
teaching forum if he would help design a website to spread jihadi propaganda.
Aziz is frank when talking about his time with JI. He says that he was not
brainwashed and still believes that taking up weapons is important in the fight
against those who prevent Muslims from practicing or spreading their religion.
What he disagrees with are terror tactics that target hotels and other public
spaces, he said.
Since being imprisoned in November 2005, Aziz has had his sentence reduced four
times for good behavior. Indonesian law allows the government to shorten the
sentences of inmates who have served at least one-third of their term during
Independence day celebrations on August 17 and during the Muslim holy month of
Ramadan.
Aziz was eligible to go before a parole board in February, but police officials
from Detachment 88 requested that his review be postponed. Aziz, who received
no explanation for the postponement, believes that he is the victim of a
campaign aimed at burnishing the police's image.
Of the 73 terror suspects police have arrested or killed in the past four
months, 15 had already served time in jail for criminal activity. That
recidivism has sparked criticism, including from the country's justice and
Human Rights Minister, Patrialis Akbar, who suggested that prison-run
de-radicalization programs had failed.
Others say the root of the problem lies with the correctional system.
Indonesia's prisons suffer from severe overcrowding, endemic corruption, and
bribery between guards who seldom have received ethics training. US rights
lobby Human Rights Watch and Indonesian legal aid groups have issued reports
detailing the widespread abuse of prisoners by guards.
Aziz believes that the number of people who return to their radical networks is
small, but that those who do have often been traumatized while under detention.
He is convinced that the Sunata-led plan to attack the July 1 police parade was
in retaliation for the use of force in ongoing terrorism raids.
Shortly before marking the one-year anniversary of the JW Marriott and Ritz
Carlton hotel bombings, the International Crisis Group (ICG) released a report
that claimed divisions between the country's different radical groups had left
its jihadi movement weak and divided.
Sidney Jones, a ICG senior adviser, explained that the rifts demonstrate how
radical ideologies are shifting toward seeing local enemies - such as police
and lawmakers opposed to the creation of an Islamic state - as equal to Western
ones. That ideological shift, she says, should concern police.
"There have been at least two police murders and they required only a few
people. So you could continue to see these attacks mounted by only a tiny part
of the radical movement," Jones said. Jones suggests that de-radicalization
programs have so far failed because those who participate in them are seldom
the hard-core ideologues.
Aziz, accused of providing sanctuary to Noordin at the time he was Indonesia's
most-wanted terrorist, falls somewhere in between on that continuum. He says
that the excessive use of force in counter-terrorism operations, and widespread
official views that Islamists are enemies of the state, have hindered
government efforts to neutralize Islamic radicalism.
He insists that Semarang's inmates are generally open-minded and do not approve
of acts that cause the death of innocents, but that the police must be willing
to work with them. "If the police treat us with disrespect, we can be hard to
them," Aziz said. "We are ready to die, and they are not."
Sara Schonhardt is a freelance writer based in Jakarta, Indonesia. She
has lived and worked in Southeast Asia for six years and has a master's degree
in international affairs from Columbia University.
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