Posted on 08/29/2006 1:30:38 PM PDT by knighthawk
WITHIN two years of Abu Bakar Bashir's last clandestine visit to Australia, terror suspect Jack Thomas had met and married - within a day - a close friend of the cleric's wife and was meeting with senior figures in the terrorist network Jemaah Islamiah.
Thomas's new wife, Indonesian-born Maryati Idris, was central to introducing him to the organisation that has been blamed for a series of terrorist attacks including the two Bali bombings.
Through these connections he was also introduced to the mysterious Indonesian twin brothers - Abdul Rahim Ayub and Abdul Rahman Ayub - who were entrusted with setting up JI's first terror cell in Australia, Mantiqi 4.
Terror experts have said that JI has been known to use strategically arranged marriages as a "unique tool" for recruitment, discouraging defections from the group and blocking counter-terrorism tactics.
The revelations come as the ABC prepares to hand to authorities tapes and notes of interviews with Thomas - part of the Four Corners program prosecutors hope will also form grounds for a retrial on terror charges.
They also come as federal authorities cited Idris's links to JI as grounds for imposing a harsh control order on Thomas - limiting him to his home at night and barring him from making phone calls to known terrorists.
Little is known about the circumstances surrounding the 1998 marriage of Thomas and Idris other than that the former taxi driver was told of the fine arts student by his religious friends in Melbourne. The marriage was conducted after Bashir had visited Australia at least 11 times prior to 1998, using the false name Abdus Somad.
Idris was the daughter of an Indonesian policeman and had a degree in arts and information systems from Monash University.
At the time they married, she was studying in South Africa and Thomas flew there to meet her.
While they had exchanged letters previously, they were married the very day they met.
Then in March 2000, they travelled to Malaysia to meet Bashir, accompanied by Jack Roche, the man who became the first person convicted in Australia under anti-terrorism laws. Roche was jailed for plotting to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Canberra.
Just a month before, in a secret meeting in a village outside Kuala Lumpur, Roche had met with Bali bombing mastermind Hambali.
He had a proposal for Roche: He "wanted a white Caucasian male who followed Islam to go to Indonesia for basic training (to fight) in Afghanistan," Roche revealed in a witness statement tendered to the Melbourne committal hearing of 13 terror suspects last month.
While Roche continued on to a terror training camp in Afghanistan, it was another year before Mr Thomas set out for Pakistan with his wife and young child on what he told his Melbourne family was a spiritual mission.
When the Thomas family left Australia for Pakistan in early 2001, their first contact point in Kabul was a friend of Maryati.
Within months, Mr Thomas had gone to train at the Al Faruq camp for foreign jihadis. Mr Thomas completed his training in August 2001 and returned to Kabul to be reunited with his wife. There, the family stayed in an al-Qa'ida guesthouse, according to an FBI dossier tendered in the Victorian Supreme Court.
Mr Thomas explained in his interview with the ABC's Four Corners that Bashir was a "family friend" of his wife. "My wife had gone to school with his wife," he said. "They went to school together, as far as I know."
Thomas's brother Les maintained yesterday that the only "link" Maryati had with JI was the fact she went to school with a woman who later married Bashir.
However, Bashir's wife, Aisyah Baraja, is in her early 50s and the daughter of Abdul lah Qadir Baraja, a co-founder with Bashir of the al-Mukmin Islamic boarding school in central Java where several of the Bali bombers were educated as students.
The pair were married in 1970 and have three adult children, Zulfah Bashir, Abdul Rosyid and Abdul Rohim, and six grandchildren.
One of the leading researchers on JI, Sidney Jones, told The Australian that JI often used arranged marriages to strengthen and extend its networks.
"JI arranged the marriage of one of its up-and-coming wakalah heads to the daughter of the most militant local Muslim leader in Poso (Indonesia) so he could quickly tap into local contacts," Ms Jones said.
Terror expert Rohan Gunaratna said JI was effectively one "big family", and there was a lot of marrying within the jihad circles.
Noor Huda Ismail, a consultant on jihadist networks and religious extremism, has written that once inside the group, JI members tended to cement ideological and other bonds by marrying the sisters and daughters of comrades-in-arms. "It becomes difficult for a member to defect from JI without seeming to betray his family."
The Islamic Women's Welfare Council chairwoman, Tasneem Chopra, said yesterday Maryati was much like any other mother juggling three children and mortgage repayments.
Ms Chopra, who has known Maryati since the late 1990s, said the Indonesian-born woman lost her "confidence and resolve" after her husband was arrested in Pakistan.
And she questioned the links between Maryati and Bashir, saying: "I think it's a leap, not a link."
Additional reporting: Stephen Fitzpatrick, Richard Kerbaj
Ping
True - except for "following islam" part...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.