JI continues to be a serious threat: US official

JI continues to be a serious threat: US official

Agence France-Presse Jakarta

Jamaah Islamiyah continues to be a serious regional threat despite the arrest of numerous alleged members of the terrorist network, a senior U.S. official said Tuesday.

"We think that JI continues to be a serious regional threat," said the official, who requested anonymity. "It's still a vibrant network that is throughout the region."

Numerous reputed JI members have been arrested in Indonesia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

They were allegedly controlled by Hambali, a fugitive Indonesian who allegedly acted as the link between Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network and JI.

Ali Ghufron, the man whom police say replaced Hambali as JI's operations chief, is on trial in Bali charged with having overall responsibility for last October's bombings that killed 202 people on the resort island.

"We think we're making incredible progress but there's still a long road ahead of us," the official told reporters, describing JI as a combination of local and al-Qaeda influences.

"It's a combination of the two. It's al-Qaeda taking advantage of local discontents, local networks, putting money into it, sending people into it. So it's not either al-Qaeda or entirely homegrown," the official said.

Before the Bali bombings Indonesian officials were reluctant to admit terrorists were present in their country. Now things have changed and there is "a good deal of confidence" in police and the country's political will to address terrorism, the official said.

"It no longer needs to be at the top of the list of things we need to press them on. They're doing it. They're doing it because they see it as in their own interest," the official said.

Indonesia is trying suspects in the Bali and the South Sulawesi capital of Makassar terror attacks and the suspected bomber of the Philippine ambassador's house in Jakarta.