Police examine role of suspected S'pore JI leader
Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Police said on Tuesday that they were questioning the suspected leader of the Singapore branch of Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) for possible involvement in other "incidents" in Indonesia, while adding that they had no plan to extradite him.
An Indonesian with Singapore citizenship, Mas Selamet Kastari, was arrested for carrying a fake passport and identification card on Bintan island in Riau on Sunday.
Police Detective Chief Comr. Gen. Erwin Mappaseng said Selamet was in detention for violating immigration rules only, for the moment.
However, he said, a police team was dispatched to Riau for an initial look at possible ties to alleged JI members here.
"The plan is that once we've concluded our probe in Riau, he will be immediately sent to our headquarters (in Jakarta) for an intensive investigation," Erwin told reporters. "Because we will try to expand the case in order to see whether he was involved in other incidents in Indonesia."
So far 29 suspects have been arrested in connection with the Bali bombing which killed more than 190 people, mainly foreign tourists, on Oct. 12 last year.
Over the last week, new evidence surfaced supporting claims that the bombing was the work of JI -- a largely underground group operating in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.
According to Singapore, Selamet is leading the JI branch there. He is a fugitive in Singapore, where he allegedly planned to crash an airplane into Changi international airport and blow up U.S. and Britain interests in the city-state.
Singapore cracked down on suspected JI members a few months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The alleged planned strikes on the city-state never materialized.
Selamet has reportedly been in Indonesia since early 2002.
"We don't know what his (Selamet) activities are in Indonesia, or whether his presence in Batam is connected to JI activities. That's why we need to interrogate him," Erwin said, referring to the industrial estate island about 15 minutes south of Singapore.
He said intelligence reports showed that he had visited the East Java town Sidoarjo and Bali. But neither the purpose nor the time of these visits were known, he added.
Police arrested Selamet in Tanjung Pinang, a port city in Bintan, where he planned to meet two Singaporeans.
The meeting never took place, and Erwin could not yet say who he was waiting for.
He said they also captured the people who forged Selamet's passport and identification card, for which he paid Rp 2 million (about US$224).
Police arrested Selamet following a tip off, known as a red notice, from Interpol. But it remains unclear whether police will deport him.
Government officials here have long complained about Singapore dragging its feet on an extradition agreement, accusing the city- state of benefiting from Indonesian fugitive tycoons hoarding their wealth in Singaporean banks.
"There is a possibility (of deportation) although we don't have an extradition agreement," said the man in charge of investigating the Bali attacks, Gen. I Made Mangku Pastika.
Selamet's arrest would also signal that Southeast Asian countries need to speed up in uniting the region under an anti- terror pact. Police have already named four Malaysian suspects in the bombing, three of whom remain at large.
"Selamet's arrest is significant to uncover the JI network in Indonesia since he's an important figure at JI. I am sure of that," said Pastika.
Recent confessions from key suspects have increased suspicions that the bombing was a JI operation entirely rather than a group of people with ties to the group.
Police have widened the investigation to include JI's alleged spiritual leader Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, a Muslim cleric who leads the Ngukri Islamic boarding school in Surakarta, Central Java.
According to police, key suspects claimed Ba'asyir gave his blessing to the bombing and said they met him before and after the bombing.
Ba'asyir has denied these charges and police now plan to confront him with the suspects to cross check their statements.