Thailand seeks RI's aid to stop terror attack
Thailand seeks RI's aid to stop terror attack
Agencies, Bangkok
Indonesian authorities have agreed to keep tabs on Thai students attending Islamic schools in the country to thwart possible terrorist recruitment, Thailand's justice minister said on Thursday.
Pongthep Thepkanchana said he made the surveillance request to Indonesia's National Police Chief Gen. Da'i Bachtiar on the sidelines of a transnational crime meeting held by ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Critics claim Islamic schools - known as madrassa - often propagate fundamentalist ideas. Some have been accused of being breeding grounds for extremism. Several alleged terrorist leaders in South and Southeast Asia have been linked to the schools.
"There are some universities and schools there (in Indonesia) that advocate violence," Pongthep said.
His request came four days after a series of coordinated attacks in Muslim-dominated southern Thailand. Assailants set 20 government schools on fire and stormed an army base, killing four soldiers and making off with more than 100 weapons.
Pongthep said terrorism was one of four major concerns he discussed with Bachtiar, along with arms smuggling, money laundering and drug trafficking.
The ASEAN plus three (ASEAN and China, Japan and South Korea) conference is considering how globalization has contributed to making transnational crime a major regional problem.
Thai Deputy Prime Minister Bhokin Bhalakula called for urgent measures and long-term solutions - including extradition treaties and mutual legal assistance - to fight rising threats in Southeast Asia.
Meanwhile, officials said Thailand is investigating links between a wave of violence in the mainly Muslim south and foreign militant groups.
As helicopter-borne troops led security sweeps in the restive south, some officials said they were convinced those behind the attacks since Sunday had ties to foreign groups such as Jamaah Islamiyah (JI), the Southeast Asian network linked to al-Qaeda.
The comments were the clearest yet from the government that mainly Buddhist Thailand is facing an Islamic militancy far bigger than previously believed.
Officials said the separatist Gerakan Mujahideen Islam Pattani (GMIP) may be behind Sunday's attacks and one of its leaders, Jehbemae Buteh, was believed to be hiding in Malaysia.
"We believe Buteh is the leader of the group attacking southern Thailand," Pallop Pinmanee, deputy chief of the Internal Security Operations Command, said in a radio interview.
"The National Intelligence Agency received a tip-off in the beginning of December that a group of 200 locally and internationally trained terrorists had entered and started its movement in southern Thailand," Pallop said.
Gen. Kitti Rattanachaya, a former army commander in the south and now a government security adviser, said links between militants in the region went back to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, when many foreign Muslims joined the mujahideen.
"Those people helped in the war, returned home and set up JI in Indonesia," and groups in Malaysia and Thailand, he said.
"The question which became clear is why Hambali entered Thailand. It's because he has a connection here."
Hambali, the Indonesian-born suspected JI operations chief, is thought to have masterminded the Bali bombings in 2002. He was captured in Thailand in August.
But, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who says the attackers were "mainly involved with crime, arms smuggling and narcotics" and "commuted" between Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, dismissed Kitti's comments as "outdated".
Thaksin, a rising regional political star who has worked hard to draw foreign investment into a booming economy, said on Wednesday the attackers were neither "international terrorist groups like Jamaah Islamiyah" nor separatists.
Jamaah Islamiyah is seeking a pan-Islamic state encompassing Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the southern Philippines. Thailand has put three southern provinces that border Malaysia, and where most Muslims speak Malay, under martial law, since the attacks.
Police complain they are getting little cooperation from local people and Defense Minister Thammarak Isarangura appealed to Muslim leaders at a special prayer ceremony on Thursday to help find the culprits.
"You can be sure that any tip you provide us, we will reward you," Thammarak told the gathering at the army depot attacked on Sunday.