Suicide Bombing at Indonesian Church Injures 22

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/09/25/world/asia/AP-AS-Indonesia-Church-Explosion.html?ref=asia

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: September 25, 2011 at 10:34 AM ET

SOLO, Indonesia (AP) — A suicide bomber blew himself up inside an Indonesian church as hundreds of worshippers were filing out after the Sunday service, injuring at least 22 people, police said.

The bomber's mangled body lay at the entrance of the Tenth Bethel Gospel Church. Around him, screaming people were splattered in blood.

Police Chief Gen. Timur Pradopo said the low-intensity device appeared to be attached to the man's stomach.

"We are now waiting for DNA test results to confirm his identity," Pradopo said. "We hope to reveal it soon."

A woman working at an Internet cafe near the church in the Central Java town of Solo said the man had visited her shop an hour before the explosion and browsed websites about al-Qaida and a local Islamist group.

He left a bag behind containing a copy of the Quran, a mask and a cellphone charger, Rina Ristriningsih told The Associated Press. She said all of the items had been confiscated by police.

Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim nation of 237 million, has been hit by a string of suicide bombings blamed on the al-Qaida-linked network Jemaah Islamiyah and its offshoots since 2002, when a strike on two Bali nightclubs killed 202 people, most of them foreign tourists.

Subsequent attacks targeting restaurants and hotels have been far less deadly, however, and the last occurred more than two years ago, thanks in large to a security crackdown that led to the arrests and convictions of dozens of suspects.

But bombings by solo "jihadis" targeting Christians, security officers and Islamic sects deemed blasphemous by hard-liners have continued.

Djoko Suyanto, a top security minister, told reporters that Sunday's attack should serve as a reminder that prospective suicide bombers, some without clear motives, are still out there.

It appeared that the bomber entered the church through a side door, mingled with worshippers, and then, when the service was over, headed out with them.

He detonated his device near the entrance, killing himself and wounding at least 22 people, said Pradopo, the police chief.

"Everyone was screaming," Fani, a witness, told Metro TV. Like many Indonesians she goes by only one name.

"I saw fiery sparks and, near the entrance, a man dead on the ground, his entrails spilling out. People around him were splattered with blood."

Members of the congregation said they did not recognize the bomber.

"He walked about 4 meters (yards) behind me," Abraham, who attended the service, told El Shinta radio. "I believe he was disguised as a churchgoer."

Indonesia is a secular nation with a long history of religious tolerance, but a small extremist fringe has become more vocal — and violent — in recent years.

Critics say President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who relies heavily on Islamic parties in parliament, has remained largely silent as minorities have been attacked by hard-liners or seen their houses of worship torched or closed.

However, he was quick to speak out after Sunday's attack.

"Whoever is behind such violence has to be arrested," he said, adding that neither religious nor ethnic differences can justify such actions. "Crime is crime, terrorism is terrorism."

Yudhoyono said there were indications the assailant may have been linked to a terror network in the West Java town of Cirebon that carried out a suicide attack on a mosque packed with police in April.

Thirty people were injured in that attack.

___

Associated Press writers Niniek Karmini and Ali Kotarumalos in Jakarta contributed to this report.

Indonesian Assault Victim Gets Harsher Sentence Than His Attackers

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/world/asia/16indonesia.html?_r=1&ref=indonesia

By AUBREY BELFORD

Published: August 15, 2011

DENPASAR, Indonesia — An Indonesian man who survived a deadly mob attack by Muslim hard-liners was sentenced Monday to six months in prison, prompting outrage from rights groups over a sentence harsher than those received by some of his assailants.

Enlarge This Image

Associated Press

Deden Sudjana faces prison after surviving a mob attack.

Related

• Rights Advocates Criticize Light Sentences in Sectarian Killings in Indonesia (July 29, 2011)

• Times Topic: Ahmadiyya

Deden Sudjana, a member ofAhmadiyya, a minority Muslim sect that many conservative Muslims consider heretical, was found guilty by a district court in Banten Province on charges stemming from the attack in February. Judges said that he had refused police orders to leave the scene and that he had wounded one of the attackers.

The judges rejected a charge of incitement leveled by prosecutors, who had sought a sentence of nine months.

The clash, in the remote district of Cikeusik, caused outrage after a graphic video of it surfaced online. It showed the police offering little resistance as more than 1,000 villagers descended on a home where 21 Ahmadis were staying, killing three of them and then beating and stomping on their mud-covered bodies.

The attack and trial that followed were widely denounced as evidence of declining religious tolerance in Indonesia, where the police, government officials and the justice system have often appeared reluctant to punish — and, in some cases, are accused of having colluded with — Islamic hard-liners, who have engaged in increasingly frequent attacks on Christian churches and on properties owned by Ahmadiyya.

Last month the same court sentenced 12 villagers, including a 17-year-old seen in the video bashing a man’s skull with a rock, to three to six months in jail for their involvement in the attack. Prosecutors did not seek charges of murder or manslaughter.

In the court session on Monday, judges found that Mr. Sudjana, whose right hand was nearly severed in the attack, shared responsibility for the clash because he had helped to stockpile weapons in the Ahmadis’ home, and had resisted police calls to abandon the village, where clerics and villagers had consistently called for the Ahmadis’ departure.

“This sets a very dangerous precedent,” said Firdaus Mubarik, a spokesman for Ahmadiyya. “This decision delegitimizes the right of Ahmadis to defend themselves. It means that they can be punished if they defend themselves when their homes and mosques are attacked.”

Mr. Mubarik said light punishment in cases of sectarian violence only encouraged more attacks on Ahmadis, who are seen by many orthodox Muslims as violating the central tenet that Muhammad is the final prophet.

In the latest such episode, over the weekend, a mob reportedly led by an Islamist vigilante group, the Islamic Defenders Front, damaged Ahmadiyya buildings and assaulted people in the city of Makassar.

Human Rights Watch called on the Indonesian government to set up an independent inquiry into the trial, which “is appalling and smacks of injustice,” Elaine Pearson, the group’s deputy director for Asia, said in a statement on Monday.

Prosecutors in Serang, where the trial took place, rejected the accusation that they had sided with hard-liners. “Deden came specifically from Jakarta to prepare weapons, stones and spears. He was reminded by the police to stay away so there wouldn’t be a clash,” said Hamad Yunus, a member of the prosecution team.

“The citizens who came only wanted a dialogue, but there was resistance from the Ahmadis, which started the clash,” Mr. Yunus said.

The defense did not say whether it would appeal the verdict.

A version of this article appeared in print on August 16, 2011, on page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: Indonesian Victim’s Sentence Spurs Outcry.

Indonesian Police Used FPI as ‘Attack Dog,’ Leaked US Cable Alleges

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/indonesian-police-used-fpi-as-attack-dog-leaked-us-cable-alleges/463174
Jakarta Globe | September 03, 2011


Unredacted US diplomatic cables published by antisecrecy Web site WikiLeaks on Friday allege collusion between Indonesian security forces and the radical Islamic Defenders Front.

Though the claims are not new, the leaked cables go into far greater detail than before and name the sources providing the US Embassy in Jakarta with information on a number of recent controversies, each of which has the potential to embarrass the Indonesian government.

One of the cables states that a contact within the State Intelligence Agency (BIN), Yahya Asagaf, had “sufficiently close contacts within” the Front, known as the FPI, to warn the embassy that it would be attacked by the vigilante group on Feb. 19, 2006, during protests against the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

The cable says the contact alleged that then National Police Chief Gen. Sutanto, the current head of BIN, had provided the FPI with funds prior to the attack, but cut off the funding after the incident.

“When we questioned [the contact’s] allegation that Sutanto funded FPI, Yahya said the police chief found it useful to have FPI available to him as an ‘attack dog,’” the cable says.
 
“When pressed further on the usefulness of FPI playing this role, noting that the police should be sufficiently capable of intimidation, Yahya characterized FPI as a tool that could spare the security forces from criticism for human rights violations, and he said funding FPI was a ‘tradition’ of the Police and BIN.”

The contact said the FPI had obtained the “majority of its funds from the security forces” but faced a “budget crunch” after the attack.

Another cable also alleges the FPI had close contacts with former Jakarta Police Chief Nugroho Djayusman, who admitted the connections to embassy officials.

“He then explained defensively that it was natural for him, as the Jakarta Police Chief, to have contacts with all sorts of organizations,” the cable continues. “This was necessary because the sudden release of energy from the Islamists, who had been repressed under [former dictator] Suharto, could have posed a security risk.

“‘But it doesn’t mean I was involved,’ he said, distancing himself from responsibility for any violent activities.”

The cable said that Nugroho illustrated his point by claiming that Sutanto lacked useful connections, “and when the violent FPI demonstration took place, Sutanto had to call Nugroho to request assistance.”

“Nugroho told us that he then called FPI Chairman Habib Rizieq and arranged the surrender of three men who had arranged the violence outside of the US Embassy. “

Nugroho, a controversial figure also blamed for failing to prevent the deadly anti-Chinese riots after the downfall of Suharto in 1998, also took a swipe at the FPI’s Islamic credentials.

Though he acknowledged the FPI had a “clear track record of violence” he labeled the group a “small, relatively insignificant group” that was “not ideological, except insofar as it opposed gambling, prostitution and pornography.”

“By contrast, he noted that ‘Ngruki’ (shorthand for [Abu Bakar] Bashir’s pesantren and, one can assume, the Jemaah Islamiyah organization) was a much more serious ideological group.”
 
In a later cable in the second quarter of 2006, Yenny Wahid, the daughter of former President Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid, said the retired group of security officers who had helped form and finance the FPI — including Nugroho — had lost control of the group, saying they had “‘created a monster’ that now functioned independently of its former sponsors and did not feel beholden to them.”

“Although anyone with money could hire FPI for political purposes, no one outside of the group could control FPI head Habib Rizieq, who functions as his own boss,” the cable said.