Possible Attack during Obama Trip in Indonesia

JAKARTA, KOMPAS.com - Islamist militants in Indonesia may be considering attacks on soft targets and Westerners when U.S. President Barack Obama visits this month, the head of counter-terrorism said on Thursday. Obama is due to visit Indonesia, his childhood home, between June 15 and 17 after delaying a trip originally scheduled for March.

“We haven’t got any detail of a specific plot to target Obama,” Tito Karnavian, the head of Indonesia’s counter-terrorism unit, told foreign reporters. But he added that the fact Obama’s visit would focus international attention on Indonesia could motivate militants to attempt an attack.

“I don’t think they have the capability to mount an attack on Obama. One of our concerns is other targets that are soft. One incident during the Obama visit is enough,” said the head of Detachment 88, the counter-terrorism unit set up in the wake of the 2002 Bali bomb attacks.

Detachment 88 has arrested or killed several suspected Islamist militants, including bombing masterminds Noordin Mohammad Top and Dulmatin, in the wake of bomb attacks on two high-end Jakarta hotels in July 2009. The unit has also helped uncover a network of militants which used the jungle in Sumatra’s Aceh province as a training base and which had carried out pistol and grenade attacks on Westerners in Aceh.

Some militants linked to the network had planned to attack Westerners in Aceh during Obama’s state visit in order to take advantage of international attention, said Karnavian. Their plan had been disrupted by the raids, which led to the arrest of scores of their members, but he said the idea could still be alive.

“For the current visit by Obama, we don’t have any new information of a plot but we need to pay attention and be very careful because some (militants) remain at large,” he said. “We haven’t got any information about attacks being plotted by them but the idea is there. We are not sure if the idea is deleted or not, but we have to assume they have got the idea.” Recidivism and training

Karnavian said tapped phone calls suggested that the source of international funding for Indonesian militants had shifted from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia, but didn’t elaborate. To address recidivism, a new counter-terrorism agency will be launched in two to three months’ time focusing on rehabilitation of captured militants and prevention of recruitment, he said.

The new unit would also coordinate counter-terrorism efforts between law enforcement agencies and work to address the problem of prisons being used to recruit new members. Indonesia’s counter-terrorism legislation should be broadened to allow prevention of military-style training by militants, he said, adding that Detachment 88 can only detain militants if they are caught training with real weapons.

“The anti-terrorism act doesn’t criminalise precursor activities such as indoctrination or use of toy guns” in training, he said, adding that Detachment 88 cannot detain suspects who they are tracking in Central Java and who are linked to militant group Jemaah Islamiah simply because they are being indoctrinated or training with mock weapons.

“Intelligence reports are not recognised by judges as preliminary evidence for making arrests,” he said.