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August 30, 2006

Australia: Jihad Jack's Wife Denies Muslim Terror Group Links

We reported yesterday that "Jihad Jack" or Joseph Thomas (pictured right), was subjected to a control order, the first to be imposed under Australia's new anti-terrorism laws. The Australian Federal Police (AFP) had argued that Thomas was likely to be "attractive to aspirant extremists who will seek out his skills and experiences to guide them in achieving their potentially extremist objectives."

The AFP summary also claimed: "Mr Thomas's links with extremists such as Abu Bakar Bashir, some of which are through his wife, may expose and exploit Mr Thomas's vulnerabilities."

Though he had been acquitted on August 18 of receiving money from Al Qaeda because he had been "under duress" when he had been questioned in Pakistan in March, 2003, Thomas had nonetheless freely admitted on a Four Corners show for ABC that he had been to Afghanistan to join Al Qaeda, that he had met Osama bin Laden, and had been trained at the Al Qaeda-run Al Farooq terror training camp, where he had learned how to assemble explosive devices.

There were also fears that his Indonesian wife Maryati had connections with Abu Bakar Bashir, the spiritual head of the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah.

Now, according to the Australian and the Melbourne Age, Jihad Jack's wife has been protesting that she has had no family connections with Jemaah Islamiyah, the Indonesian terror group which caused, amongst other atrocities, the October 2002 bombings on Bali, which killed 202 people, including 88 Australian tourists.

Maryati's parents, Zuhra and Mohammad Idris, have now stated that the stories of a family link to Abu Bakar Bashir, which are contradictory and have come from Thomas and his lawyer Rob Stary, have no basis in fact. One of the claims had been that Mrs Idris (pictured below left) had gone to school with a woman who had gone on to marry the Islamist preacher, who was jailed for giving his consent to the 2002 Bali bombings. Mrs Idris says that the person she went to school with who eventually married Bashir as his second wife was not a friend, but a "friend of a friend".

In 2004, during a bail hearing, Rob Stary had made the claim that Maryati Thomas was a friend of Bashir's wife. Jihad Jack, in his interview on "our Corners" had said: "My wife had gone to school with his wife. They went to school together, as far as I know."

Les Thomas, Jack's brother, said: "This whole notion of the marriage itself being a kind of dark terror plot - it's just unbelievable."

Jihad Jack's father-in-law said of him: "I went regularly with him to work at 4am at the fruit distribution business where he had a job, to help him out. As a former policeman, I know how to spot if something wrong is going on."

Thomas had Maryati had married in South Africa in 1998, but they had not seen each other until a bare two hours before the Muslim wedding took place. Until then, all their correspondence had been via email. Jihad Jack had employed a marriage broker to forge the tryst.

Maryati had visited Jihad Jack in Pakistan in late 2001, when he was still an Al Qaeda trainee, and subsequent to this, she herself had been monitored for a few months by Australian intelligence.

Maryati's sister "She doesn't like politics, doesn't like the headache of it. She always says, 'I study hard, but what I study is Islam'."

She had been a tomboy during her teenage years, and had worn cropped hair then, stated her parents. They showed a photograph to prove it. Maryati only started to wear the hijab or Muslim headscarf when she went to Monash University in Melbourne to study Information Technology.

The director of the International Crisis Group, Dr Sidney Jones, is an expert on Jemaah Islamiyah. She has affirmed that there is no evidence to confirm that Maryati Thomas is a senior figure in Jemaah Islamiyah (JI). She also states that nether Thomas' nor his wifes' name appeared during her extensive researches.

According to the Age, Jihad Jack also denies claims that he travelled overseas with another Muslim convert, called Jack Roche. This man was convicted in 2004 of trying to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Canberra. Like Thomas, Roche had been a Melbourne taxi driver.

Jihad Jack Thomas said he had met Abu Bakar Bashir and Jack Roche only once, in a hotel in Indonesia. He said: "Bashir came to the hotel.... with Jack Roche. As far as I knew he was coming to visit the people in the hotel who had been to the Haj. In half-an-hour I probably spoke half-a-dozen words to him."

In another story from the Australian, magistrate Gordon Mowbray has accused the government of turning Jihad Jack's control order proceedings into a "farce". Speaking at the Federal Magistrate's Court in Canberra, the capital, Mowbray said that the mentioning of Osama bin Laden's name in the AFP summary should not have been made.

The summary stated that Joseph Thomas should not contact Osama bin Laden.

Mowbray said: "In my view it makes the order look somewhat silly in putting the name on the list," he said. "... it makes it look almost a bit farcical, and this is a very serious proceeding."

And in separate news, the Islamist cleric Abu Bakar Bashir has added some fuel to the flames of the controversy over Bali 2002, by claiming that the terrorist atrocity was carried out by the United States government.

According to the Indonesian news agency Antara News, Bashir said to Australia's ABC TV that the CIA had detonated a "micro-nuclear" bomb in Bali in a move to discredit Islam.

Australia's Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, said: "It's a free country, and he can say what he likes, and of course some of the comments that he made yesterday were fairly preposterous. I don't think anyone would much believe anything he was saying."

If Bashir really believes this nonsense, maybe the Cipinang prison in East Jakarta, which he left on June 13 was the wrong sort of establishment for him to be imprisoned within

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at August 30, 2006 10:53 PM

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