An Indonesian court sentenced an Islamist militant to eight years in prison on Tuesday for aiding the alleged mastermind of the suicide bombings that killed 20 people in Bali last year.
Abdul Aziz (30) ”committed gross crimes against humanity”, according to the presiding judge, Gede Wirya. These included meeting south-east Asia’s most wanted terror suspect, Noordin Top, at least 10 times. The authorities believe Noordin organised the attack on three restaurants last October, which also injured almost 200 people. On at least one occasion Abdul let Noordin stay at his school in central Java.
Aziz, a computer teacher, was also punished for setting up a website calling on Muslims to wage war on non-Muslims, the judges said. The website included instructions on how to attack foreigners in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.
The judges added that the attack badly damaged Bali’s tourism industry, which was just starting to recover from the 2002 attack on two nightclubs that killed 202 people. Figures released last week show that tourist arrivals to Indonesia in the first seven months of the year fell by 8% compared with the same period last year, while the number of visitors to Bali in July was 22% lower than in July last year.
Indonesia was also hit by terrorist attacks on the five-star Marriott hotel in Jakarta in 2003 and the Australian embassy in 2004.
More than 100 militants have been arrested in the last few years and Noordin’s main partner, Azahari bin Husin, was killed in a gun battle with police last November.
An expert on terrorism in the region, Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group, said Noordin still had to be considered dangerous despite being under constant pressure from the authorities.
”Whole cells of JI have moved over to him,” she said, referring to Jemaah Islamiyah, the leading south-east Asian Islamist terrorist network, which used to have close links to al-Qaeda but is now thought to be operating autonomously. ”Some of these cells were created only a month before the bombings took place, which shows how quickly he can operate.”
Jones said the current trend, as demonstrated in much jihadist literature, was the establishment of small cells to counter the mounting police pressure.
”We can see that small groups are going off on their own as they lose their leadership,” she said. ”I’m not sure that the full details of this fragmentation are known by anyone so it’s hard to know whether you know the whole problem.”
Increased security around tourist sites, such as hotels, is proving a deterrent, however. Documents recovered from the 2005 Bali bombers said they could not target hotels on the island because security was too tight. – Guardian Unlimited Â