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| Southeast Asia |
| JI may target foreigners in Indonesia |
| 2005-12-21 |
| Foreigners in Indonesia could be kidnap targets for violent militants in the Christmas and New Year season, Syamsir Siregar, the chief of the National Intelligence Agency (BIN), said yesterday. News emerged last month that a web site purportedly set up under militant orders gave instructions on how to shoot foreigners in the streets of Jakarta or throw grenades at motorists stuck in traffic in the car-clogged city. Siregar told reporters that another militant tactic, possibly in the holiday season, could be kidnapping. âThey plan to do something in order to mess the situation up ... They will think a thousand times to try to do something.â âThey have plans to change targets, like to kidnap people from a certain group,â he said, adding that foreigners or Indonesian officials would be likely kidnap subjects. That would be a new twist in attacks in Indonesia, the worldâs most populous Muslim nation, which has already seen sporadic bombings blamed on the Al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah, a militant Southeast Asian network. Authorities say Jemaah Islamiyah was behind the October 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, subsequent suicide attacks against the Marriott hotel and Australian embassy in Jakarta, and again in Bali in October this year against tourist sites. The first attack killed mainly foreign tourists, but in the latter three most of the dead were Indonesians, despite the nature of the targets. The US and Australian embassies have issued warnings in recent weeks that foreigners could be targeted during the holiday season. Police across Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago of 17,000 islands, have been tightening security ahead of the holidays to prevent attacks, including a repeat of 2000 Christmas Eve bombings of churches in several Indonesian cities which killed 19. âHopefully the activity of security forces will limit their (militantsâ) space,â Siregar said. Volunteers from Indonesiaâs largest Islamic group have said they would help police guard churches. Around 85% of Indonesiaâs 220 people are Muslim. Christians form the second largest religious group in the country. Although Indonesia has been relatively calm in recent weeks, security analysts say the threat of militant attacks is still high because police have yet to catch one of the alleged masterminds of previous bombings, Malaysian-born Noordin M Top. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #2 may? |
| Posted by: Slash Gleretle2635 2005-12-21 17:08 |
| #1 There goes my Indo' vacation. Actually, the only thing worth seeing in that primitive rat-hole is: Bali. And Bali is Hindu. Be aware: in spite of the extermination of 3-500,000 ethnic Chinese by Indo-Muslim paramilitaries in the mid sixties, the Chinese form 5% of the total population, but control over 60% of Indo' companies. Why? Seculars trump religious morons, every time. Religion sucks. |
| Posted by: CaziFarkus 2005-12-21 17:03 |