Posted on 10/29/2002 9:35:09 PM PST by Nachum
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian police armed with machine pistols, sledgehammers and shotguns raided the homes of at least two Australian Muslims after the government banned militant group Jemaah Islamiah, community leaders and media said.
The latest raid came at dawn Wednesday in the western city of Perth, when officers in balaclavas and carrying submachine guns stormed a house neighbors said belonged to an Indonesian Muslim family, Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC) reported.
ABC radio said federal police declined to confirm whether the action was connected to a raid on the home of an Indonesian Muslim identified only as Jaya in Sydney late Sunday.
It was unclear whether anyone was detained in Perth.
But the raid by Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) officers and federal police in Sydney, which came on the day Australia banned Jemaah Islamiah as a result of the October 12 bombings in Bali, did not end in any arrests.
Community leaders said Jaya's only links to the Southeast Asian Islamic group was that he had listened to a sermon by its suspected leader, Abu Bakar Bashir, many years ago.
The alleged connection to Jemaah Islamiah was "absolutely ludicrous," Kuranda Seyit, spokesman for the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, said.
"He just heard the guy speak about five years ago, that's as close as he got," he told Reuters.
Australia's ban came after the United Nations included Jemaah Islamiah on a list of groups or people whose assets should be frozen due to suspected ties to Osama bin Laden or his al Qaeda network.
The ban also followed the bombings of packed beach bars on the Indonesian resort island of Bali in which more than 180 people died, about 90 of them Australian.
Jemaah Islamiah, which seeks a pan-Islamic state covering swathes of Southeast Asia, is suspected by foreign governments, including Australia, of involvement in the Bali blasts.
Indonesian police say they have found no evidence of that.
Militant Indonesian Muslim cleric Bashir visited Australia in 1997 to deliver sermons at mosques.
SLEDGEHAMMERS
Ten heavily armed officers from ASIO, the leading national intelligence agency, and the federal police, some carrying sledgehammers, took part in the operation at Jaya's house.
Jaya's home was searched and computers and documents confiscated, including copies of Sydney tabloid The Daily Telegraph, community leaders said. They said he is a devout Muslim who distributed pamphlets on Islam.
"I did nothing wrong," Jaya told The Australian newspaper.
"I just attended some lectures that he was at, like I've done with other Indonesian religious scholars. I'm as upset about the Bali bombings as everyone."
A spokeswoman for the Attorney General's Office, which oversees ASIO, declined to comment on "operational matters."
Southeast Asian security officials have indicated Jemaah Islamiah may have had northern Australia in its sights as part of its vision of a pan-Islamic "super state."
The government believes there are sympathisers in Australia of Jemaah Islamiah and of bin Laden's al Qaeda, but "no network."
I agree. Get these filthy scum bastards off the face of the earth.
I for one hope that WE survive. In .357 magnum Veritas.
Indonesian police say they have found no evidence of that.
Heads back in the sand -- it was just a bunch of Aussie infidels, after all.
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