‘US still the target’: Indonesia’s arrest of Jemaah Islamiah terrorist leader reveals thousands of recruits

SCMP ^ | 12/12/2020 | Amy Chew

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• JI said to be in ‘damage control’ after detention of Ustad Arif but expected to be operating normally in six months to a year

• Group is now raising funds through various business activities as it seeks to establish an Islamic caliphate in Indonesia and the southern Philippines

About two months ago, Indonesian counterterrorism task force Detachment 88 arrested a little-known cleric named Ustad Arif, according to a senior security source.

The 54-year-old from Klaten, Central Java, turned out to be the leader of Jemaah Islamiah (JI), the Southeast Asia branch of al-Qaeda.

JI was behind all the deadly terror attacks in Indonesia from 1998 to 2010 before it was weakened by Indonesian counterterrorism police, who arrested hundreds of its members during the period, including several leaders.

“Ustad Arif was arrested about two months ago,” a senior security source told This Week In Asia on condition of anonymity this past week before adding a tantalising detail: “He has links to Malaysia, but those links have not been profiled. They are sleeper cells.”

Following the JI-masterminded 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people, including 11 Hong Kong residents, JI had split into two factions, said Robi Sugara, a lecturer and counterterrorism analyst at Syarif Hidayatullah Islamic University in Jakarta. One faction believed in violent jihad and supported al-Qaeda and later, Islamic State, while another believed in what Sugara called “jihad proselytisation”.

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“JI’s main target remains the US and its allies due to its involvement in the Middle East, according to some of the recent JI documents that we found,” the source said, adding that one of the factors behind JI’s targeting the US was President Donald Trump’s support for Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel, which is a holy city for both Muslims and Jewish people.

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[WVNan]

Oh goody, the destroyers have their next war just waiting for the democrates to be sworn in. Just think, we could have had at least four more years of world peace. Idiots.