‘JI still capable of major terror attacks’

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AFP) – The Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terrorist network remains capable of mounting major attacks in Southeast Asia despite the arrest of several suspects in the Bali bombings, analysts said yesterday.

Indonesian police have named one of those arrested, Imam Samudra, as the "mastermind" behind the blasts which killed more than 190 people last month, but terrorism experts say he was more likely a mid-level operative.

"There could be another 10 people like Imam Samudra, at his level, and that would not be known by him or anyone who was not higher up in the hierarchy than he is," said Clive Williams, director of terrorism studies at the Australian National University.

"JI is very security conscious and one cell will not know about another cell."

Any of these cells could be launched into a new attack by JI leaders still at large, Williams told AFP, including operational commander Riduan Isamuddin, commonly known as Hambali.

Some reports recently have suggested that Hambali had been replaced by an Indonesian known as Mukhlas, a brother of one of the arrested Bali bomb suspects, Amrozi.

But Rohan Gunaratna, author of Inside al-Qaeda, said Mukhlas now headed JI’s operations in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia while "Hambali has gone one step higher."

Hambali’s stature had increased both within Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda group, where he is a member of the shura (consultative council) and JI, where he is al-Qaeda’s pointman for Southeast Asia, Gunaratna told AFP.

"It is very likely that they will plan an even bigger operation unless Hambali is arrested."

Despite being at the top of the wanted list in several countries, Hambali has eluded capture and most analysts say his whereabouts are unknown, suggesting he could be anywhere from Indonesia itself to Bangladesh or the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Gunaratna, however, says emphatically that Hambali is in southern Thailand – a claim likely to outrage the Thai government, which has already angrily rejected reports that an FBI investigation found the Bali attacks were planned at a January meeting in the south of the country.

Wherever he is, analysts agree that his freedom dampens any euphoria over the arrests in Indonesia.

"I wouldn’t want to diminish the excellent efforts of police involved, but of course you don’t know how much of the organization you’ve affected up to now," said Williams.

Gunaratna, who is an analyst with a number of international security think-tanks, was more critical of the police operation.

"After Bali the Indonesian security forces are targeting only the JI and al-Qaeda members directly connected with the Bali operation.

"They are not targeting JI as an organization and as a result of that JI’s support and operational infrastructure remains fully intact in Indonesia.

"As such if JI want they could always mount another operation inside Indonesia or use Indonesia as a launching pad to strike the neighborhood."

Gunaratna said, however, that the link with al-Qaeda was crucial and that "JI by itself did not have the capability to make a bomb of this magnitude in Bali, they had to have external assistance."

He named Syafullah, a senior al-Qaeda operative from Yemen, as a major suspect in the Bali blast along with an Indonesian named Syawal and a Malaysian identified as Zubair.

Indonesian police, asked about a Time magazine report naming the three, said Monday that none of the arrested suspects had so far mentioned them.

Their whereabouts are unknown.