Backup for antiterror war lamented

Backup for antiterror war lamented

Tiarma Siboro and Dadan Wijaksana, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The absence of legal grounds to deal with transnational crime
and a lack of coordination among government institutions are
obstructing the country's efforts to curb terrorist-related
activities, according to intelligence sources.

The sources also said that the military had often fed
intelligence data to the police, but the latter failed to follow
it up because "intelligence reports are not acceptable for the
due process of the law".

To illustrate his point, he referred to the country's efforts
to uncover here the network of the international terrorist group
al-Qaeda.

"Legally, we can arrest suspected terrorists under the
existing laws, considering that we do not have an antiterrorism
law following the revocation of the Antisubversion Law in 1999,"
a source told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

The 1999 Antisubversion Law granted intelligence officers the
unlimited right to take any action, which included arresting and
questioning people based on an intelligence report.

Today, an arrest can be made by using an immigration law or
forgery charges instead of the Antiterrorism Law, he said.

Suspected terrorist Omar al-Faruq, for example, was arrested
and deported on charges of violating the Immigration Law, not of
terrorist acts.

Meanwhile, another intelligence officer urged for the
establishment of an antiterror body involving security officers
to curb terrorist acts. He said the Army's Special Force's
(Kopassus) antiterror detachment was trained to deal with
problems caused by terror acts -- such as hijacking or hostage
taking -- rather than taking preventive action.

Following the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. introduced an
antiterrorism law which stipulates that intelligence data is
acceptable for prosecuting suspects. The law declares a state of
war and adopts a military law that does not acknowledge a
suspect's rights, including the right to be silent, the source
said.

"Based on this antiterrorism law, the U.S. has made several
arrests on suspected terrorists, including the recent arrests of
Omar al-Faruq, claiming to be a Kuwaiti citizen, and Muhammad
Iqbal Saad Madni, an Egyptian. But it (U.S. law) cannot be
applied here," he said.

"It is different now as the police can only arrest and
investigate people through the proper procedures and strong
evidence," he said.

He was referring to the police's failure recently to prosecute
Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, the chairman of the Solo-based Indonesian
Mujahiddin Council (MMI), and Ja'far Umar Thalib of the Laskar
Jihad. Both are alleged to have links with the international
terrorist group al-Qaeda.

Under the New Order regime, the military could launch
intelligence operations in all areas of society, including in
politics. Many of the operations victimized civilians. Following
the downfall of former president Soeharto, Indonesia was hit by a
series of bomb attacks, but so far only a few cases have been
brought to court.

"For intelligence output, we follow the so-called intelligence
cycle, which starts with the collection of data or information as
preliminary evidence, an analysis of the data and then a
conclusion of whether or not the data is valid," the source said.

"Once it (the data) meets the requirements of an intelligence
product, we report it to the related institutions, to our
supervisor or the decisionmaker," the source said.

He added that during the analyses, intelligence officers
conducted Positive Clandestine Intelligence, or PCA. The process
is carried out through an underground operation, which sometimes
requires the officer to interrogate people behind closed doors.
The process is also called elicitation.

The source admitted that intelligence reports were sometimes
fabricated for the sake of political interests, and "such
practices are still going on until now".