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February 16, 2006
Indonesia: Islamist Sentenced To Death
Today's TMCNet.com reports that a court in Malaku province in Indonesia has handed down a death sentence on an Islamist militant who was involved with sectarian attacks which saw 8 people killed.
The individual, Asep Jaya, or Asep Djaja, who also went under the alias Dahlan, was found guilty of killing people in two attacks. In the first attack, which took place in the village of Wamkana in South Buru on May 5, 2004, two villagers were killed, as we reported earlier.
Asep was also part of a commando unit, said to comprise 8 individuals, who attacked a police security post in the village of Loki on the island of Seram, the largest island in the Malaku chain (the Moluccas). This gun assault happened on May 15 2005, in which five policemen and one civilian was killed. The police had been asleep at the time of the attack.
The attack was mounted with the assistance of three speedboats. When arrested, Asep had a minimum of 10,000 live bullet rounds in his possession. Asep and others in this assault had apparently unergone training in the Moro region of the island of Mindanao in the Philippines.
Kharlison Harianja, a district court judge in Ambon, found Asep guilty on Monday (13 Feb), of involvement in terrorist acts and for the illegal possession of firearms. Asep has denied his guilt and has initiated an appeal.
The Malaku islands were the scene of a sectarian war mounted by Islamists against Christians between 1999 and 2002, in which more than 9,000 people were killed. Recently, attempt to revive the conflict have resurfaced.
The Moluccas (Malaku islands) were originally Christian, but since the 1970s, Indonesia's policies of "transmigration" brought a large influx of Muslims to the islands. The Moluccan war was mainly led by a group called Laskar Jihad, led by Jaffar Umar Thalib who escaped conviction for his war crimes.
The attacks for which Asep has been found guilty were part of an attempt by Islamist terrorists to revive the sectarian conflict.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at February 16, 2006 2:12 PM
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