The special anti-terror unit of the Indonesian police, called Densus 88 [also called Detachment 88], is hurting the Islamic extremists badly in Indonesia. The elite team, financed and trained by the US and Australia, has arrested many militants in the last few years and got them convicted. In an operation this month it arrested two top leaders of Jemaah Islamiah (JI) militant group including Abu Dujana, the head of JI’s military wing. Before being nabbed Dujana was shot in the leg. JI has been linked to al Qaeda and blamed for the Bali blasts, the bombings of the Australian embassy in 2004 and the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in 2003.
The ruthlessness of Densus 88 has Islamist hardliners squirming. Cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, founder and guiding force of JI, has labeled the crack team as a tool of the US, whom he calls the real terrorist. He has urged all Muslim policemen in Indonesia not to join Densus 88.
He says:
We know that Detachment 88 is a tool of Americans and Jews and any Muslim who helps infidels is an apostate.
Bashir was jailed for 30 months, being accused of the 2002 Bali bombings, but was released lately, much to the chagrin of families of those killed in the blasts.
Kholil Ridwan, a spokesman for the Islamic Community Forum, an umbrella group of all Islamic organizations, says that Densus 88 was an American tool to “stigmatize Islam.”
Meanwhile lawyers representing the arrested suspected terrorists have demanded that the Indonesian government should disband Densus 88, saying their clients were badly tortured and their human rights were violated. It remains to be seen if a court of law will admit such a case, but the Indonesian police says it will check the lawyers’ antecedents to sniff out any connection with terror acts.
The Peninsula :Via: IHT
