Laskar Jihad chief arrested, facing provocation charges

Laskar Jihad chief arrested, facing provocation charges

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The National Police confirmed on Saturday the arrest of Laskar
Jihad Ahlussunah wal Jamaah commander Ja'far Umar Thalib over an
allegedly provocative speech he made last week.

National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Saleh Saaf said Ja'far
was arrested at 3:55 p.m. at Juanda Airport in Surabaya, East
Java, on his way to Jakarta from Ambon, the capital of Maluku.

"He (Ja'far) will be charged under Article 160 of the Criminal
Code on agitation and Article 130 of the Code on slanderous
remarks against the President and Vice President," Saleh told a
media conference at which he was accompanied by National Police
chief of general crimes Brig. Gen. Aryanto Sutadi.

Article 160 of the Criminal Code carries a maximum sentence of
six years in jail, while Article 130 carries an a sentence of
eight-years imprisonment.

Both police officers then replayed a tape recording of
Ja'far's speech to the crowd on April 26, in which he condemned
Maluku Governor Saleh Latuconsina and Maluku Provincial Police
chief Brig. Gen. Soenarko Danu Ardianto, and expressed his
intention to kill all of the relatives of former president
Sukarno, including current President Megawati Soekarnoputri.

The tape also revealed that Ja'far called on the crowd to "use
bombs and fire them at the enemy".

Earlier on Saturday, Ja'far dismissed the allegations that he
had helped provoke the attack on the Christian village of Soya
last week, which killed at least 14 people.

"My speech before the crowd on April 26 was actually intended
to calm down the local people," Ja'far told reporters at
Hasanuddin Airport in Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi,
before he departed for Surabaya.

He questioned the genuineness of the tape recording provided
by the police.

"That's the police's version of the case (the Soya incident
and Ja'far's April 26 speech)," he said.

Originally, Ja'far was to have been arrested earlier in the
day during his 30-minute stopover at Hasanuddin Airport in the
South Sulawesi capital of Makassar on Saturday at noon local time
on his way back to Java from Ambon, the capital of Maluku. Due to
technical considerations, however, he was allowed to proceed to
Surabaya, where he was eventually arrested, South Sulawesi Police
chief Insp. Gen. Firman Gani told The Jakarta Post by phone.

Firman said that police investigators in Ambon and Jakarta had
enough prima facie evidence to arrest Ja'far.

"Ja'far's arrest is based on the prevailing law as there is
evidence that he has been provoking conflict in Maluku for quite
some time. The police do not have to wait for an order from the
President in this regard as we run the (criminal justice) system
by the book," he said.

Similarly, National Police chief Gen. Da'i Bachtiar said on
Saturday that there had been no instruction issued to the police
for the arrest of Ja'far, claiming that the police had enough
grounds of their own to arrest the Laskar Jihad chief.

Tensions were on the rise in Ambon on Saturday evening after a
resident, identified as Stanley Maitimu, was killed and at least
two others injured in a bomb blast earlier in the afternoon,
reports said.

The blast went off while rival mobs were hurling stones at
each other in the city's Trikora and Pohon Pule districts, the
report said.

It was the second deadly blast since the signing of the peace
pact in February. The first blast, which rocked Ambon on April 3,
killed at least four people and triggered the torching of the
gubernatorial offices by a mob.