Indonesia captures most-wanted terroristTimes Online and agencies
Indonesia’s most-wanted Islamic militant, said to be connected the 2002 Bali bombing that killed 200 people, has been captured by police.
Abu Dujana, who heads a military wing of the Southeast Asian militant group Jemaah Islamiah (JI), was shot in the thigh during his capture and arrested on Saturday by the Indonesian anti-terrorist unit, Detachment 88, which caught a number of suspects in a series of raids in central Java.
Mr Dujana, believed to be involved in several fatal attacks, will also be questioned about the 2004 Australian embassy blast and a car bombing at the JW Marriot hotel in Jakarta a year earlier.
Sisno Adiwinoto, a National Police spokesman, said: “With this arrest we have successfully stopped acts of terrorism in the future.
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“He was a key figure in the terrorist network in Indonesia. After interrogating all suspects we know that Abu Dujana, alias Yusron Mahmudi, is the chief of the military wing of JI.”
Mr Dujana, 37, went by a number of names, investigators said, but DNA tests and fingerprints proved the man they held was the wanted suspect.
“He is a big fish within the JI structure,” said Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group. “If he is willing to talk he will be able to tell the police about the structure, the strength, the finances and the international conection and the goal and objectives of JI,” added Mr Jones, an expert on militant Islamic organisations.
Mr Dujana had replaced Noordin M Top, a Malaysian national considered a mastermind behind a series of bomb attacks, as Indonesia’s most wanted fugitive, Makbul Padmanegara, the deputy police chief, told reporters recently.
Asian and Western authorities blame JI for a series of attacks in Southeast Asia, including the 2002 bombings on the resort island of Bali.
“He was involved generally in the first Bali bombing, Poso and others,” said Mr Adiwinoto, who described him as a field commander, strategic planner and bomb expert.
According to police files, Mr Dujana had military training in Afghanistan in 1989 where he later fought with the mujahedeen. Fluent in Arabic and English, he is also said to have met al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
In 1991, he became a teacher at an Islamic boarding school in Johor in Malaysia, where he met Noordin M Top. He later became secretary at JI’s headquarters, police said. He also spent time in JI training camps in the southern Philippines, according to MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base.
After a series of raids earlier this year, police said that Mr Dujana had emerged as the head of a military wing of JI after the death in 2005 of master bomb-maker Azahari Husin. It was said by police that Mr Dujana had direct control of JI’s ammunition and explosives, including distribution and storage.
In the March raids, police said they had also found a huge cache of weapons, explosives and chemicals that could be used to make a bomb even bigger than the main device used in Bali. Although there has not been a major bomb attack since 2005, police say Indonesia still faces a considerable threat from Islamic militants.
Mr Adiwinoto said seven other suspects had been caught at the weekend apart from Mr Dujana, but declined to give any details apart from their initials.
The goal of JI, founded in 1993, is the creation of an Islamic “super-state” spanning Indonesia, Malaysia, the southern Philippines, southern Thailand, Singapore and Brunei. Initially involved in violent communal conflicts within Indonesia, the network is said to have forged international links with militant groups such as al-Qaeda, as well as Abu Sayyaf and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in the Philippines.
The group is blamed for a series of deadly attacks on American and Western targets in Indonesia - including the 2004 Australian embassy blast, a car bombing at the JW Marriot hotel in Jakarta a year earlier and the Bali bombing. Some experts say, however, that in recent years JI has been focusing more on its regional struggle.
