Posted on 06/10/2003 10:05:41 AM PDT by knighthawk
A MEMBER of a violent Indonesian group with suspected links to Jemaah Islamiah and al-Qa'ida has been actively fundraising in Sydney for "jihad", while working as a shuttle bus driver at Sydney airport.
The Australian understands the man, who is known as Dance Darmince but often uses the alias Mohammad Darimi, heads a small group of Laskar Jihad members in Sydney and has been co-ordinating their fundraising efforts for the past five years.
Mr Darmince is an Australian citizen and has lived in Sydney's Lakemba for about 20 years.
From about 1999, he drove airport shuttle buses transporting passengers to, from and around Sydney airport for private shuttle bus company Kingsford Smith Transport.
The company confirmed yesterday that Mr Darmince had been employed under his alias, Mohammad Darimi. It said that after on-and-off employment for more than four years, he had quit in November.
The revelation follows the news that Bilal Khazal, a man whom the CIA says is affiliated with Osama bin Laden, worked as a Qantas baggage handler at the airport in the lead-up to the Sydney Olympics.
Transport unions said yesterday his employment highlighted lax security at airports.
Mr Khazal told the Nine Network last night that he was innocent and the CIA had wrongly named him as an al-Qa'ida operative.
But "like any Muslim", he said, he believed bin Laden was a good man. He argued that the US and Israel were behind the September 11 attacks and the Bali bombing.
Mr Darmince's former boss, KST manager John Koolman, said Mr Darmince had had access to public areas only, and before being hired had been asked for his driver's licence and an authority from the NSW Department of Transport, which included a police check.
A source within the Sydney Indonesian community told The Australian Mr Darmince, and occasionally other men, visited Indonesian people at home and asked them for money to "help with their jihad and the fighting in the Malukus".
"He asked nicely always, but I think people knew it was better to give money," said the source.
He said Mr Darmince travelled regularly from Sydney to Indonesia. He was in Australia last month, but had since returned to Indonesia.
"Laskar Jihad have the same purpose as JI," one source said. "They both want an Islamic state (in Indonesia) but Laskar Jihad is much more radical than JI – (they are) much scarier people who don't worry at all about doing killings."
It is understood Australian security agencies have been closely monitoring Laskar Jihad in Australia for several years.
The group is thought to be responsible for the death of thousands of Christians in Ambon, the capital of the Maluku Islands, and is believed to have loose links with al-Qa'ida and Jemaah Islamiah.
The Australian has also been told Ramzi Ali, the secretary of the Dee Why Mosque at the centre of a power struggle with JI in the late 1990s, was also raising money for Laskar Jihad operations in 2000.
Mr Ali denies he ever helped raise money for Laskar Jihad and says he only helped to collect funds for hospitals and orphans – Christian or Muslim.
While there is a widespread belief among some terror experts that Laskar Jihad disbanded around the time of the Bali bombings, the Australian National University's Clive Williams said he believed the organisation was still active.
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