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| Southeast Asia |
| "Police and I are good friends" |
| 2003-08-29 |
| A man accused by two members of Jemaah Islamiah of being a member of the outlawed terrorist group’s central command is living openly in central Java, where he says he often prays with local police on Fridays. Mustaqim, identified by the alleged Bali bomber Mukhlas and the JI supergrass Faiz Abu Bakar Bafana as a key member of their organisation, is running an Islamic boarding school called Mustaqim’s Dar es-Syahadah, about 40 minutes’ drive from Solo. Mustaqim denied to the Herald the allegations from JI members against him. He said he had never been troubled by local police apart from the occasional "friendly chat". He is good friends with the local police chief, he said. "Some of my best friends are police, they have me in to chat all the time. They seem very interested in me." In a record of interview with Indonesian police dated October 22 last year, Bafana, now in jail in Singapore, said Mustaqim was a member of the central council of JI and the head of JI’s Hudai Biyah camp in Mindanao in the Philippines, established to replicate military training JI members had undertaken in Afghanistan. Mukhlas, or Ali Ghufron, the alleged operational commander of the Bali bombings, told police in an interview soon after he was arrested near Solo in December last year that Mustaqim had been "in charge of operations" in a JI camp in Mindanao. He sounds like a very "holy" man. The police chief of the Simo subdistrict, Sri Hartoyo, said he was unaware of the serious allegations against Mustaqim, who had never been picked up for questioning. "Based on my analysis he is not one of them . . . but I’m not sure," Sri Hartoyo said. But he said he was suspicious of the school because it was so "closed", and police had been monitoring it for most of this year. The police chief met Mustaqim regularly, but felt he did not really know who he was, he said. A ringing endorsement. In a report last week, the International Crisis Group named Mustaqim as one of a dozen top JI members still missing. Yesterday, the report’s author and Indonesia director for the group, Sidney Jones, said she was surprised Mustaqim could run the school despite the evidence against him. "We know this guy is very deeply involved in the organisation," she said. The failure to arrest him may be because JI’s legal status was less clear in Indonesia than elsewhere - it is banned by the United Nations. she said. The police, with limited resources, may be pursuing those JI members known to have been involved in violence, so those running the organisation such as Mustaqim have been able to operate unhindered, she said. More likely they are watching who comes and goes. That or he has "protected" status. Mustaqim told the Herald: "I have never been to Afghanistan, I have never been to the Philippines, I have never been abroad." "Just look at my passport. No, this one, those are, er, somebody else’s." He said police had dropped by for a "friendly chat" and had asked him if he knew any JI members. He had told them he did not. "Nope, don’t know them." He said that although he had studied at the nearby Ngruki school - run by the alleged spiritual leader of JI, Abu Bakar Bashir - he had not met Bashir at the time because Bashir had been living in Malaysia. Since Bashir had returned to Indonesia he had met him very occasionally, he said. "Since he [Bashir] was linked with the recent issues I tried not to get in touch with him as I want this pesantren [Islamic boarding school] to be free from that kind of thing." "Are you stupid? He’s too hot to touch right now." In a second interview with police in February this year, Bafana said Mustaqim went to Afghanistan in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Bafana said he met Mustaqim in Lukman Nul Hakim in Malaysia in 1996 or 1997, where Mustaqim was teaching at an Islamic school. Covers blown, time to pick him up before he splits. |
| Posted by:Steve |