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November 28, 2005
Indonesia: Suspected Muslim Militant Leader Arrested
The Borneo Bulletin announces today that Indonesian police have arrested a man who may be a Muslim militant leader, responsible for ordering atrocities in the Moluccas, islands of Indonesia which saw extensive Muslim/Christian sectarian violence between 1998 and 2002, killing at least 5,000 people.
A peace treaty was signed in 2002, but sporadic violence between the Muslim and Christian communities still breaks out.
The man arrested is called Ahzam, and he is coordinator of an Islamic boarding school in the district of West Seram. He is assumed to be a deputy of a hardline Muslim cleric named Bahtar.
Bahtar was responsible for a series of violent attacks in Malaku (the province), including an attack on May 15 this year on Seram, the largest of the Malaku islands. In this attack, gunmen had opened fire on a police security post in the village of Loki, which killed five policemen and one civilian. The officers had been sleeping when they were attacked.
Three people who took the attackers by speedboat to commit the attack have already been arrested, states Asia News, as well as an individual called Dahlan, alias Asep, confiscating at least 10,000 live bullets found in his possession. Eight people are thought to have been in the commando unit which carried out the attack.
In October, Mirifica stated that another individual, arrested in connection with the attack, 35 year old Ongen Pattimura, had been involved in earlier terrorist assaults, including a bomb incident in Ambon on April 3, 2002, which killed seven and injured 52. The individual known as Dahlan or Asep Djaja also killed two villagers of Wamkana, in South Buru on May 5, 2004. Asep and some of the others in the Loki assault had undergone training on Moro in the Philippines.
Today's report about the capture of Ahzam states that the time of his arrest is unknown, but he is now in custody in the city of Ambon. Ahzam's superior, Bahtar, is still at large.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at November 28, 2005 10:35 AM
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