Pakistan to deport Hambali's brother
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Pakistan will shortly deport the brother of terror suspect Hambali and 18 other Malaysian and Indonesians who were arrested last month on suspicion of having links with the Jamaah Islamiyah (JI), a senior interior ministry official said Friday.
"The decision has been taken to deport them and the process will start in the next couple of days," head of the interior ministry's crisis management cell, Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema, told AFP.
Indonesian and Malaysian authorities have no objections to their deportation, he said.
"None of them would be prosecuted here," Cheema added.
Pakistan is holding 13 Malaysian and six Indonesian students arrested during separate raids on religious seminaries in the port city of Karachi last month.
Hambali's younger brother, Rusman Gunawan alias Gun-gun, was among the Indonesians arrested from the Abu Bakar seminary in Karachi.
"He too will be deported, but presently he is in our custody," Cheema said.
A four-member Indonesian team visited Pakistan last month to seek information about the students and also to interrogate Gunawan.
The team also held negotiations with senior interior ministry officials.
However, so far neither the government of Pakistan nor the Indonesian or Malaysian governments have disclosed the nature of the detainees' alleged terrorist plans or targets.
"The matter is too sensitive and has been shared at government-to-government level," an intelligence official here said, on condition of anonymity.
The suspects will be deported from Karachi in phases, he said.
"Gunawan still insists he is not part of Jamaah Islamiyah, but supports his brother's cause," the official said.
In Jakarta, the Indonesian government regretted the Philippine's supposition that suspected terrorist Taufik Rifki is Indonesian, despite the fact that his nationality has not yet been established.
Spokesman of the ministry of foreign affairs Marty Natalegawa said that the statement may have tarnished the image of the world's most populous Muslim country.
He said that until now the Philippines had found no solid proof of Taufik's citizenship.
Referring to the statement, Marty said, "We have no proof of identification that he is an Indonesian citizen. The suggestion (that Taufik is an Indonesian) is based on his confession alone.
"We should be more careful with statements that we cannot verify as they could create misperceptions about Indonesia," he added.
Indonesia has delayed providing consular assistance to the suspect. But Marty said a letter had been sent to the Philippine foreign affairs ministry and ministry of defense asking for the opportunity to question Taufik directly.
"We do not want to be involved in the ongoing legal process against Taufik if there is not legal certainty on his citizenship," he said.
Taufik, who was arrested on Oct. 2, has been declared the second in command of the JI network in the Southern Philippines.
Marty said there that many Indonesians left the country for years only to lose their citizenship, as they never registered themselves with the Indonesian embassy.
"We also hear that Taufik is speaking with a Malay accent, so there are many possibilities regarding his citizenship," Marty said.
The Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said on Friday that JI was a national threat as the recent arrest of Taufik had revealed that the group's plans were "both deadly and far-ranging" and could threaten the stability of the region.
The Philippine police said Taufik had confessed under interrogation that he was JI's "finance and liaison officer" responsible for funding deadly bombings in the south.
His arrest led government forces to an alleged JI hideout, where they recovered bomb-making equipment and radical Islamic literature.
The Philippine police also said that the arrested man is closely related to the late Fathur Rahman Al-Ghozi, an Indonesian who was sentenced to 17-years imprisonment in Manila but was killed in a shoot-out after escaping from prison.