Al-Qaida planned attack on US Embassy in Indonesia, official says

Posted 3:54PM on Wednesday 23rd January 2002 ( 23 years ago )

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Five suspected members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network arrived in Indonesia from Yemen last July with a plan to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, a high-ranking U.S. official has revealed. But Indonesian authorities balked at taking action, allowing the men to slip out of the country after they realized they had been discovered, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. U.S. diplomats surmised that authorities had intentionally scared the team away so as not to have to confront them. The incident, which was not made public earlier, highlighted the ambivalent attitude of Indonesia's government and military toward foreign and domestic Islamic radicals who reportedly assisted the al-Qaida team. It also illustrated the difficulties the United States may face if it extends its war against al-Qaida and related terrorist groups to Southeast Asia, where close cooperation with friendly governments and security forces would be essential for success. Indonesia's top security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono declined to comment on the allegations Wednesday, but said law enforcement agencies were monitoring potential terrorists. Police chief Gen. Da'i Bachtiar said he had not received reports of the alleged plot. Extremists linked with bin Laden are reported to have established cells in Malaysia and Singapore. And a contingent of U.S. troops is in the Philippines to stage exercises with government units battling Abu Sayyaf guerrillas in the jungles of Basilan island, just off Indonesia's northern coast. But cooperating with Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, may present special problems for U.S. policy makers. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has said the Bush administration wanted to resume military assistance to Jakarta but was restricted by a congressional ban imposed after the Indonesian army devastated East Timor in 1999. Since Sept. 11, President Megawati Sukarnoputri has tread a fine line between pleasing Washington -- one of its major foreign donors -- and reflecting the disquiet many of its Muslim citizens feel about the war in Afghanistan. The matter has been further complicated by Megawati's hands-off policy toward the military. This has allowed the generals to retain links with domestic radicals, in particular the Laskar Jihad militia which is blamed for thousands of deaths in a war with Christians in Maluku province. Laskar Jihad is not a grassroots movement. Western intelligence sources say hardline generals covertly set up the group in 2000 as a tool to destabilize reformist President Abdurrahman Wahid and thwart efforts to assert civilian control over the military after decades of dictatorship. Before the embassy plot was revealed, an Indonesian general told The Associated Press that Laskar Jihad was financed with money embezzled from the army's main warfighting element. The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said an audit revealed a $20 million deficit in the unit's budget. Western intelligence sources confirmed that $9.3 million of those funds were used to finance Laskar Jihad. Its commander, Jafar Umar Thalib is a religious fundamentalist who spearheaded the war against the Christians in Maluku. Although he has repeatedly denied any ties to al-Qaida, Thalib has acknowledged that he met bin Laden in Afghanistan. "(Thalib) is smart enough to pretend that he doesn't have anything to do with Osama," the U.S. official said. "But there's more than enough circumstantial evidence that Laskar Jihad is part of a network of radical groups" in Southeast Asia. Authorities in the Philippines and Malaysia have recently arrested several Indonesians who allegedly had links with al-Qaida terror cells. In August, the presence of the suspected terrorists caused a partial closure of the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, although diplomats refused to identify the threat at the time. A hand drawn sketch of the building allegedly in their possession "fit the pattern" of attacks on U.S. missions in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, the U.S. official said. But Indonesian authorities, "took so much time to establish a wiretap, then brought in the local police and created so much noise," that this alerted the terrorists and local collaborators and gave them time to flee, he said. The five men, who arrived from Yemen, had based themselves at a religious institution run by Arab Indonesians in eastern Java, the U.S. official said. The eastern city of Surabaya is home to tens of thousands of people of Arab descent. Most are immigrants from Yemen who maintain close ties to their ancestral homeland. The United States became a target of terrorism in Yemen with the October 2000 suicide bombing attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole, which killed 17 sailors. That attack was blamed on al-Qaida.

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