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JI’s ranks are swelling
A radical regional group linked to Al-Qaeda and blamed for Southeast Asia’s worst terror attacks has thousands more followers than previously believed, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said. But Downer went on to shrug off fresh warnings by the alleged leader of the Indonesian-based Jemaah Islamiyah group, Abu Bakar Bashir, and Al-Qaeda that Australia and other close US allies would be the next terrorist targets. In an interview published Thursday in The Sydney Morning Herald, Downer said Australia believed "there are somewhere between three and five thousand Jemaah Islamiyah adherents in Indonesia. Three to five thousand people can do a lot of damage if they get their hands on TNT."

Intelligence agencies had estimated Jemaah Islamiyah had several hundred followers and as few as 50 members actually involved in operations following a crackdown on the group after it carried out the October 2002 bombing of a nightclub strip in Bali that killed 202 people, 88 of them Australian. Downer said Australia’s assessment was that Jemaah Islamiyah was recruiting supporters through a network of radical Islamic schools in Indonesia. "There is still no doubt some people going through the hardest line of the pesantren (Indonesian Islamic schools) ... are going to be a problem," he said. Despite his dramatic assessment of Jemaah Islamiyah’s growing following, Downer was withering in his response to Bashir’s latest threats, made in secretly taped interview from his Jakarta jail cell that was shown on Australian television late Wednesday. In the interview, Bashir said that "sooner or later America and the countries that assist it will be destroyed in the name of Allah". Downer said Bashir’s warning "just shows what a loathsome creature he is. We completely reject his threats."

Downer also rejected a statement purportedly issued overnight by the Al-Qaeda cell which claimed responsibility for last week’s deadly rail bombings in Spain that Australia and other American "lackeys" were now in the line of fire. "Our brigades are now preparing for a fresh strike. Will it be the turn of Japan, America, Italy, Britain, the Al-Sauds, Australia ...?" asked the statement published in the al-Qods al-Arabi newspaper. Downer responded: "Organisations like Jemaah Islamiyah and Al-Qaeda are not going to tell Australia what to do. Most Australians are never going to bow to threats and blackmail and pressure from Jemaah Islamiyah and Al-Qaeda. We will make friends with who we want to make friends with, and make alliances with who we want to make alliances with."
I sure hope the Australians like Downer as much as I do...

Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-03-18
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=28429