Police arrest alleged Singapore JI leader

Police arrest alleged Singapore JI leader

Tiarma Siboro and Wahyoe Boediwardhana, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Police officers in Riau said on Monday they had arrested the
suspected leader of the Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) base from
Singapore, but added that they had no evidence linking him to the
Bali bombing.

An Indonesian-born Singaporean citizen, Mas Selamet Kastari
was arrested on Sunday night in the city of Tanjungpinang on
Bintan island in Riau, said Police Detective Chief Comr. Gen.
Erwin Mappaseng.

Selamet was a JI wakalah for Singapore, Erwin said, using JI's
term for country leader.

He is wanted by Singapore for allegedly plotting to crash an
airplane into the Changi international airport.

"We had been following him (Selamet) since he left the town of
Dumai in Sumatra by ferry," Erwin told reporters.

Erwin said they nabbed Selamet while he was apparently waiting
for someone at Tanjungpinang port. "We found him carrying a fake
identity card and a fake passport," he added.

Police believe the alleged JI leader entered Indonesia last
year, as he avoided a crack down on suspected JI members in
Singapore which began in December 2001.

Meanwhile in East Java, According to AFP, a Malaysian national
was arrested in Gresik, East Java, on Monday and believed to be
connected to the financing of the Oct. 12 attacks. However, other
sources in Gresik were quoted as saying an Indonesian man, who
was an accomplice of key suspect Amrozi, was arrested for weapons
possession.

An underground organization, JI is said to be struggling for a
pan-southeast Asian Islamic state. The group reportedly moved its
headquarters from Malaysia to the Indonesian town of Surakarta,
Central Java in 1999. JI's alleged spiritual leader, Abu Bakar
Ba'asyir, is a Muslim cleric and leader of the Ngukri Islamic
boarding school in Surakarta.

Ba'asyir spent several years in Malaysia during President
Soeharto's crackdown on Islamic hardliners. He returned to
Indonesia in 1999.

The United Nations officially labeled JI a terrorist group
following the Oct. 12 Bali bombing, which killed at least 190
people, mainly foreign tourists.

For Singapore, Selamet's arrest could mark a breakthrough in
its attempt to wipe out JI's operations in its own backyard.

The city-state has yet to confirm Selamet's identity.

"Our Indonesian counterparts have informed us of the arrest of
a Singaporean who is purportedly Mas Selamet Kastari," the
ministry of home affairs said in a statement as quoted by AFP.

"We will be taking action to confirm his identity. We will
continue to work closely with our Indonesian counterparts," it
said.

It is also not immediately clear whether Indonesia would
deport Selamet without an extradition agreement with Singapore.

Asked whether Selamet might be involved in the Bali bombing,
Erwin said the investigation into that link had just begun.

Since last week police had begun widening the investigation on
the suspected links between the Bali bombing and JI.

Several of the 29 arrested suspects claimed to be members of
JI or knew about the organization. But only last week did police
confirm that they would examine Ba'asyir's involvement in the
bombing, after key suspects admitted he knew about the operation.

In Bali, prosecutors said that police had missed last Friday's
deadline to submit the revised case file for Amrozi, one of four
key suspects in the terror attacks and the first one police
arrested last year.

Prosecutors need Amrozi's dossiers now to prepare his case for
the court and start the trial this month as planned.