A man accused by two members of the outlawed organisation Jemaah Islamiah as being a key member of their terror group's central command is living openly in Central Java.
Mustaqim, identified as a senior JI organiser by accused Bali bomber Mukhlas and JI informer Faiz Abu Bakar Bafana, is running an Islamic boarding school about 40 minutes' drive from Solo.
Despite being named by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group as one of a dozen key JI members still at large, Mustaqim is friendly with the local police chief and often prays with police on Fridays.
In an interview with The Age, Mustaqim denied that he was a senior JI organiser and said he had never been troubled by local police apart from the occasional "friendly chat".
In a record of interview with Indonesian police on October 22 last year, Bafana, now in jail in Singapore, said Mustaqim was a member of the central council of JI and had been the head of JI's Hudai Biyah camp in Mindanao in the Philippines.
The Mindanao camp was established to replicate military training for JI members that had been done in Afghanistan.
The operational commander of the Bali bombing, Mukhlas, also known as Ali Ghufron, told police after he was arrested last December that Mustaqim had been in charge of operations in a JI camp in Mindanao.
The police chief of the Simo subdistrict, Sri Hartoyo, said he was not aware of the allegations against Mustaqim, who had never been questioned.
"Based on my analysis he is not one of them... but I'm not sure," Sri Hartoyo said. He said he was suspicious of the school because it was so "closed" and police had been monitoring it for most of this year.
He said that while he met Mustaqim regularly, he felt he did not really know who he was.
He said Mustaqim had sent his child, aged seven or eight, to study at nearby Ngruki school, run by the alleged spiritual leader of JI, Abu Bakar Bashir.
In a report last week, the International Crisis Group named Mustaqim as one of 12 top JI members at large.
Yesterday, the report's author and Indonesia director for the ICG, Sidney Jones, said she was surprised that Mustaqim was still able to run the school despite the evidence against him. "We know this guy is very deeply involved in the organisation," she said.
She said the failure to arrest him may be due to the fact that although JI is banned by the United Nations, its legal status in Indonesia was unclear.
She said that it may be that the police, with limited resources, were pursuing JI members known to have been involved in violence rather than those who had been running JI.
When The Age put the allegations to Mustaqim, he denied them. "I have never been to Afghanistan. I have never been to the Philippines. I have never been abroad," he said.
He produced an identity card that said he had been born on October 4, 1968. "I never left this place," he said.
He said police had dropped by for a "friendly chat" and had asked him if he knew any JI members. But he told them he did not.
He said that although he had studied at the Ngruki school, he had not met Bashir at the time because Bashir had been living in Malaysia.
Mustaqim said that since Bashir had returned to Indonesia he had met him very occasionally. "Since he was linked with the recent issues I tried not to get in touch with him as I want this pesantren (boarding school) to be free from that kind of thing."
In a second interview with police, in February this year, Bafana said Mustaqim went to Afghanistan in the late 1980s or early 1990s.
Bafana said that in 1996 or 1997 he met with Mustaqim in Lukman Nul Hakim in Malaysia, where Mustaqim was teaching at an Islamic school.
|Print this article Email to a friend||Top|
|text | handheld (how to)||
Copyright © 2003 The Age Company Ltd
|advertise | contact us|