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Last Updated: Jul 31st, 2011 - 17:29:39 |
Indonesia confirms two wanted militants killed
By Olivia Rondonuwu
Oct 12, 2009, 16:17
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JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian police said on Monday that forensic tests had confirmed that two brothers accused of having a key role in deadly bombings on two luxury Jakarta hotels in July were killed in a raid last week.
The deaths of the two men -- Syaifudin Djaelani, accused of recruiting the bombers who blew themselves up at the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton on July 17, and Mohamad Syahrir -- marks further success in dismantling the militant network suspected of planning the attacks.
The two were killed during a raid near the capital on Friday after police had been tipped off by another relative who was captured earlier, national police spokesman Nanan Soekarna said.
"Actually our instructions and our commitment as police were that we very much wanted to catch them alive. However, in the field, that was not possible," he added, noting that officers had been attacked by pipebombs the men had in their safe house.
Police have conducted a series of raids since the July bombings, culminating in the shooting dead last month of Malaysian-born Islamist militant Noordin Mohammad Top, the suspected mastermind behind the attacks.
Top, who set up a violent splinter group of regional militant network Jemaah Islamiah, was blamed for attacks in Bali and Jakarta that killed scores of Westerners and Indonesians.
Police spokesman Soekarna said authorities believed that they had got all the main players in the hotels attacks after capturing or killing 21 people linked to the bombings.
Analysts said it was unfortunate Djaelani and Syahrir, both
believed to be key aides of Top, could not have been captured alive during Friday's raid to gain intelligence.
"In one respect, it's a real tragedy that these two were killed rather than captured alive. These were the people who weren't JI who could have given us more information about who else outside the JI network was being recruited by the people around Noordin," said Sidney Jones, a Jakarta-based expert on radical Islamic militancy at the International Crisis Group.
Jones also noted that the dead men were also suspected of having possible connections in the Middle East that could have provided funding for the network.
"Now they are all dead does his network continue to have any leadership structure? If it doesn't does the network still exist and can anyone from among the other fugitives move in to assume that role," added Jones, in comments made on Friday.
Noor Huda Ismail, another expert on radical Islam in Indonesia, said that killing Djaelani was a major blow for militants.
"There are not many ideologues out there, apart from Noordin, who had the track record in recruitment like Syaifudin. He has intimate knowledge and he was willing to go out into the village and recruit."
The group that Noordin Top set up went under the name in English "Al-Qaeda Jihad Organization for the Malay Archipelago."
Police spokesman Soekarna said that a video found on a laptop after that raid that killed Top appeared to show Djaelani relaying the activities of the group to Al-Qaeda in Arabic.
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