Full text of "icgid"
Update Briefing
Asia Briefing N°92
Jakarta/Brussels, 20 May 2009
Internati
Crisis Group
■
Indonesia: Radicalisation of the
"Palembang Group'
>>y
OVERVIEW
Indonesia has earned well-deserved praise for its
handling of home-grown extremism, but the problem
has not gone away. In April 2009, ten men involved in
a jihadi group in Palembang, South Sumatra, were sent
to prison on terrorism charges for killing a Christian
teacher and planning more ambitious attacks. Their
history provides an unusually detailed case study of
radicalisation - the process by which law-abiding
individuals become willing to use violence to achieve
their goals. The sobering revelation from Palembang
is how easy that transformation can be if the right
ingredients are present: a core group of individuals, a
charismatic leader, motivation and opportunity. Another
ingredient, access to weapons, is important but not
essential: the Palembang group carried out its first
attack with a hammer and only later moved to making
bombs.
The group was uncovered by accident. Singaporean
authorities and Interpol had mounted an international
manhunt for a fugitive Singaporean member of the
regional jihadi organisation Jemaah Islamiyah (JI),
Mohammad Hassan bin Saynudin alias Fajar Taslim.
Indonesian counter-terrorism police were separately
pursuing the network of the elusive Malaysian terrorist
Noordin Mohammed Top. Both searches led to Palem-
bang in 2006 and the targets turned out to be linked.
The Singaporean had helped turn a local non-violent
religious study circle into a militant jihadi group that
then made contact with the Noordin network. By 2007,
the men were under surveillance; by mid-2008 they
were under arrest.
The most important element in the group's radicalisa-
tion was charismatic leadership, which two men pro-
vided. One was the Singaporean, Fajar Taslim, a large,
good-humoured, bushy-bearded man of unlimited self-
confidence. He had trained in Afghanistan, reportedly
met Osama bin Laden or succeeded in convincing
others that he had, and by his own admission, acted as
a provocateur, constandy goading his colleagues to prove
themselves. At the time he arrived in Palembang, he
was being sought by Interpol in connection with a 2001
plot to blow up Singapore's airport.
The second, Sulthon Qolbi alias Ustad Asadollah, had
fought in Maluku, an area of intense sectarian fighting
in the years immediately following the downfall of
President Soeharto, from 1999 to 2005. Engaging, per-
suasive and very hardline, he was on Indonesia's most-
wanted list for his involvement in an attack in May
2005 in West Ceram, Maluku, in which five para-
military police were killed.
Both men separately came upon a small study circle
whose biggest concern was the conversion of Mus-
lims by Christian evangelicals. Three of the men
involved were members of the South Sumatra branch
of an Islamic anti-apostasy organisation, Forum Against
Conversion Movement (Forum Anti Gerakan Pemur-
tadan, FAKTA), and FAKTA materials helped set the
group's agenda, but neither these three nor any of the
others in the group had ever actively endorsed vio-
lence. Fajar and Sulthon provided the ideology and
political drive to turn them into an Islamic group
(jama' ah) with a commander (amir) and a commitment
to jihad in the form of military operations (amaliyah)
against Islam's enemies. The first big leap was getting
the members to consider violence against the Christian
proselytisers they thus far had only preached against.
Once they were willing to kill, a broader range of tar-
gets became thinkable, including Western civilians.
Access to weapons kept the group going when other-
wise motivation might have waned. Without firearms
or explosives, carrying out a radical agenda has natural
limits. Getting a gun, even just one, gave the Palem-
bang group a huge incentive to use it. By contrast,
funding was not a particularly important factor in
radicalisation, nor was access to the internet. With the
exception of the gun and a large donation of potas-
sium chlorate for bomb-making, the group scraped
together what it needed locally, and it was not much.
The biggest expenses were round-trip bus tickets and
a house rental at about $20 a month. All communi-
cation took place by mobile phone or through face-to-
face meetings; there appears to have been almost no
use of computers.
The Palembang group was not particularly competent
nor ideologically driven; most of the men used as
operatives needed repeated infusions of jihadi pep talks.
Indonesia: Radicalisation of the "Palembang Group"
Crisis Group Asia Briefing N°92, 20 May 2009
Page 2
Four of its five attempts at operations failed, and none
of the many bombs it made was ever used. But its lack
of success should not obscure some important war-
ning signs that the investigation revealed.
First, fear of "Christianisation" in Indonesia can be a
powerful local driver for radicalisation, perhaps not as
strong as communal conflict that takes Muslim lives,
as in Ambon and Poso, but potent nonetheless. When
the Palembang group's links to FAKTAwere first repor-
ted, FAKTA's national leaders indignantly rejected any
link to terrorism, and they were right: theirs is a non-
violent, if hardline, civil society advocacy organisa-
tion. But for some conservative Muslims, apostasy is
a worse sin than murder, and the outrage engendered
by Christian conversion efforts can be exploited by
those with a jihadi agenda.
Second, a loose association of current or former JI
members, including Noordin Top, the Malaysian respon-
sible for the major bombings in Indonesia between
2003 and 2005, apparently continues to look for and
train proxies to undertake attacks on the U.S. and its
allies. In this case, an Afghan veteran and JI member,
Saifuddin Zuhri alias Sabit alias Sugeng, became the
liaison to the Palembang group, saying that he was in
direct communication with Noordin. It was immate-
rial that the group's members, with one major excep-
tion, were not JI and had no past affiliation with jihadi
groups. Sabit provided a gun, ammunition, explosive
materials, a bomb-making instructor and suggestions
on possible targets. His gamble on the Palembang group
did not pay off, but bets in the future on other possible
proxies could - and Sabit is still at large, as are
several other fugitives with the potential to lead and
recruit.
Third, attention to Jl-affiliated schools remains critical.
The problem is not what they teach; it is that they
serve as places of refuge and communication hubs,
and the bai'at, or oath of loyalty sworn by JI mem-
bers makes it unthinkable to turn anyone away. In this
case, a JI boarding school (pesantreri) became critical
to the Palembang group's radicalisation, simply by
being a place where extremists periodically showed up.
Finally, assistance to the police should continue. The
Palembang group was uncovered by accident, and
there were various points along the way where better
investigative skills could have detected its existence
much earlier - long before the Christian teacher was
murdered or any bombs prepared. Even with the enor-
mous strides made by the counter-terrorism unit of the
police, it is still possible for serious extremist activity
to take place in Indonesia without anyone knowing.
II. ANI SUGANDI AND THE BEGINNING
OF THE NETWORK
The emergence of the Palembang group is the story of
how several different networks came to intersect. 1 One
emerged around Ani Sugandi, founder of the JI-
affiliated pesantren al-Furqon in Ogan Komering Ilir
(OKI), a Javanese transmigrant area of South Sumatra
some five hours outside Palembang. This network
extended back to Central Java, to Yogyakarta, where
Sugandi first joined JI; Kudus and Solo, where his JI
superiors lived; and Purbalingga, where his wife is
from. Sugandi never joined the Palembang group or
endorsed its plans, but he nevertheless played a
pivotal, if inadvertent, role in its development.
Sugandi has impeccable JI credentials, with direct per-
sonal ties to Abdur Rohim bin Thoyib alias Abu Husna,
the JI leader arrested in Malaysia in January 2008. 2 It
was on Abu Husna's recommendation that he went to
the Afghan-Pakistan border for training from 1987 to
1992, in the same batch as some of the men who were
to become JI's top commanders. 3 On his return to
1 For more on terrorist networks in Indonesia, see among
other Crisis Group publications, Asia Report N°147, Indo-
nesia: Jemaah Islamiyah's Publishing Industry, 28 February
2008; Asia Report N°142, " Deradicalisation" and Indone-
sian Prisons, 19 November 2007; Asia Briefing N°63, In-
donesia: Jemaah Islamiyah's Current Status, 3 May 2007;
Asia Report N°114, Terrorism in Indonesia: Noordin's
Networks, 5 May 2006; Asia Report N°92, Recycling Mili-
tants in Indonesia: Darul Islam and the Australian Em-
bassy Bombing, 22 February 2005; and Asia Report N°83,
Indonesia Backgrounder: Why Salafism and Terrorism Mostly
Don't Mix, 13 September 2004.
2 Sugandi was bora in 1966 in South Sumatra of Javanese
parents. When he finished elementary school, his parents
sent him to Yogyakarta, their hometown, to continue his stud-
ies. He was still in a Muhammadiyah junior high school in
Sleman, Yogyakarta, in 1983, when he joined an activist
Muslim student group, Badan Komunikasi Pemuda Mesjid,
led by a young preacher close to Abu Bakar Ba'asyir and
Abdullah Sungkar, co-founders of al-Mukmin Pesantren in
Ngruki, Solo. Ba'asyir and Sungkar had just been released
from prison after being detained for their fiery criticism of
the Soeharto government and were hugely popular in the
student community. They were also actively organising
cells of the clandestine Darul Islam movement. In 1984,
Sugandi enrolled his younger brother in Ngruki, entrusting
him to the care of Abu Husna, then a young teacher there.
Two years later, he was inducted into Darul Islam, and
shortly thereafter, he abandoned his studies at the Sunan
Kalijaga State Islamic Institute and signed up for training
in Afghanistan.
3 Members of his batch included Nuaim alias Zarkasih, head
of Mantiqi II from 2001-2004 and appointed "caretaker"
amir or leader thereafter; he was sentenced to fifteen years
Indonesia: Radicalisation of the "Palembang Group"
Crisis Group Asia Briefing N°92, 20 May 2009
Page 3
Java, he married a woman from a Darul Islam family
in Purbalingga and tried his hand at various odd jobs,
but none lasted very long. 4 In 1996, he was formally
inducted into JI by Abu Rusdan, the Kudus militant
who became JI's caretaker amir in 2003. A year later,
Sugandi went back to South Sumatra, eventually
heading the educational program of a village-level
Muhammadiyah foundation in OKI. Sugandi says he
returned because he could not find work in Java, but
he was also almost certainly encouraged to go by the
JI hierarchy. This was a period of rapid expansion for
the organisation, largely through religious outreach
(dakwah) and the establishment of satellite schools."
If Sugandi was not directly ordered to return, it at
least would have been in line with JI's policies to
have him back in Sumatra, preaching and recruiting.
Eventually, he built his own school, al-Furqon.
In the course of his dakwah activities, Sugandi be-
friended a young junior high school student, Ali Masy-
hudi - later to become a member of the Palembang
group. In 1999, Sugandi took him to Purbalingga to
enroll him in Nurul Huda Pesantren, a school with
Darul Islam and JI links. 6 Sugandi knew its director,
Abdul Aziz, but when he delivered Ali Masyhudi, he
encountered another man he also knew: Syaifuddin
Zuhri alias Sabit alias Sugeng, a JI member from Cila-
cap, then in his mid-thirties, who was two years behind
Sugandi in the military academy in Afghanistan.' Sabit
in prison in 2008. Other members were Nasir Abas, former
head of Mantiqi III and now working with the police; and
Edi Setiono alias Usman, serving a life sentence for the
Atrium Mall bombing of 2001.
4 One of these was working in a bread factory - interesting
because one of the wealthier members of JI from Surabaya
had a bread factory that employed dozens of JI members as
retailers across Indonesia. It was through that bread factory
that JI members first arrived in Palu, where they then set up
a branch.
5 Since the late 1980s, a few Ngruki students had been sent
to South Sumatra to carry out their required practice teaching;
by 1997, there would have been a small number of Ngruki
alumni in the area to work with. See, for example, the list
of members in Ngruki class of 1989-1990, two of whom
were sent for practice teaching to Ogan Kemiring, the dis-
trict that included Sugandi' s village. "Panca Jiwa Pondok"
[Al-Mukmin yearbook], Ngruki, 1995.
6 One indication of a school's affiliation to JI is whether it
advertises in JI magazines. An advertisement for Nurul Huda
appears in the April 2009 issue of ar-Risalah, published by
a JI company in Solo.
7 They met in 1989 according to Sugandi's testimony. That
means Sabit was probably in the eighth batch of Indonesians
to go to Afghanistan, in the same class as Fathurrahman al-
Ghozi, the JI member who worked with the Moro Islamic
Liberation Front's Special Operations Group, was arrested
was far more radical than Sugandi, but the Afghan
bond was a strong one. When Ali Masyhudi was ready
to return to South Sumatra in 2004, Sabit and Abdul
Aziz accompanied him.
III. FA JAR TASLIM ARRIVE S IN
PALEMBANG
That same year, in August 2004, Mohamed Hassan
bin Saynudin alias Fajar Taslim arrived in Palembang.
He was to have a deeply radicalising influence on a
small group of local activists; without him, the Palem-
bang group would not have come into being.
Fajar had been inducted as a JI member in 1998 and
sent to Afghanistan for five months' military training
in 2000 through the good offices of Hambali. 8 On his
return to Singapore, he became a member of the spe-
cial operations team of the late Malaysian bomb spe-
cialist, Dr Azhari Husin. 9
When Singaporean authorities began a crackdown on
the JI cells in late 2001, Fajar and five others - in-
cluding Mas Selamat Kastari, who was recaptured in
April 2009 after a daring 2008 escape from a Singa-
porean prison - fled to Medan, North Sumatra, and
then embarked on an odyssey across Bali, Lombok
and Java, finally arriving in JI headquarters in Solo,
Central Java, in February or March 2002. There JI's
acting amir, Abu Rusdan - the same man who inducted
Ani Sugandi - assigned them to different areas, instruct-
ing them to live like civilians and blend in with the
population. He also dubbed them the "No Action
Group", saying they were not to engage in any amali-
yah, or military operations, while in Indonesia. 10
in the Philippines, escaped from a Manila prison, and was
captured and shot in Mindanao in October 2003.
8 Hussein bin Saynudin, his twin brother, received training
in Pakistan from Lashkar-e-Tayyaba. Hussein was in Cairo
working as a publisher when a crackdown on the Singapore
JI structure began in 2001. He decided not to return, but
was in periodic contact with his brother until the latter' s
arrest. He has been under Internal Security Act detention in
Singapore since 2007.
9 In that capacity, Fajar helped purchase materials for the
Christmas Eve bombings in Indonesia of December 2000.
Dr Azhari was killed after the second Bali bombing in a
police operation in Batu, Malang, East Java, in November
2005.
10 "The Fajar Taslim Story", handwritten autobiographical
account in the trial dossier of Fajar Taslim alias Mohammad
Hassan, Berkas Perkara No. Pol. BP/05/IX/2008/ Densus,
25 September 2008.
Indonesia: Radicalisation of the "Palembang Group"
Crisis Group Asia Briefing N°92, 20 May 2009
Page 4
Fajar was assigned to Kudus, Abu Rusdan's home-
town, and moved there with his family in July 2002,
where he became the responsibility of a senior JI
member Taufik Ahmad alias Abu Arinah. 11 JI members
there were clearly anxious about him. For one thing,
he had a Malaysian accent; for another, he was a big
man of Indian descent and not easy to hide. He was
forbidden to take part in any public gatherings, even
to go to the mosque or attend JI religious study ses-
sions. 12 It was worse after the first Bali bombs in July
2002; he and his family were moved around by JI
members worried more for their own survival than for
Fajar's. At one point, he recounts with some bitter-
ness, he and his wife and three small children were
locked in a house for three days without food. 13
Fajar's Singaporean wife demanded to go home.
In late December 2002, it was deemed safe for Fajar
to return to Kudus. But then, in early February 2003,
Mas Selamat Kastari was arrested in Tanjung Pinang,
Riau, and all JI's anxieties returned. Fajar finally
allowed his long-suffering wife and children to go
home, and took a local widow, Sayuti, as his second
wife. The marriage was largely to provide Fajar with
local cover, and he moved with her to her parents' vil-
lage in Rembang, Java, about three hours from Kudus.
With money wired from his brother in Cairo as a
wedding present, he and his new wife opened a kiosk
selling basic goods, earning enough to make ends meet.
They felt reasonably secure even when they got word
of police operations in Kudus in April 2003 that led to
Abu Rusdan's arrest. But the villagers grew increasingly
hostile towards Fajar and Sayuti, particularly when
they refused to take part in traditional ceremonies on
the grounds that they were idolatrous. Around August
2003, the couple was expelled. Forced to leave all
their belongings behind, a nearly destitute Fajar and
Sayuti moved to the nearby district of Lasem.
Fajar must have kept up sporadic contact with his JI
minders, because in August 2004, they sent a man to
tell him that another Singaporean colleague, one of
the group of five who fled with him in 2001, had been
arrested. They wanted him to leave Java immediately
- again, not so much for his safety as theirs. They
gave him one-way bus tickets to Palembang for him-
self and Sayuti, then seven months pregnant. It is not
clear why they chose Palembang over other places in
Sumatra, since they apparently did not make any effort
to make introductions to JI members there. It may
have been in part because police operations after the
2003 Marriott bombing had already netted members
in Medan, Pekanbaru and Bengkulu, and Palembang
was the only major Sumatran city left unscathed. The
fact that it also had a small Indian community meant
that he would be less noticeable than in Java. All JI
wanted was to get Fajar off its hands. 14
When they arrived in Palembang, Fajar and Sayuti
went to a large mosque and spent the next few nights
there. They were befriended by some Indians who took
them in, and while Fajar looked for work, he continued
going to the mosque to pray. After two weeks, he met
a perfume seller and Muslim healer named Abdur-
rahman Taib, then 34.
Since 2002 Abdurrahman had run a small, informal
Muslim study centre in his house called Ma'had Baitul
Ilmi, teaching basic Quranic precepts and Arabic. He
was only a high school graduate, but he had several
friends at the Raden Fatah State Islamic Institute
(IAIN), and they took turns teaching or lecturing at
his centre. In 2003, one of these IAIN lecturers estab-
lished a local chapter of FAKTA, the national Jakarta-
based group founded to counter Christian efforts to
convert Muslims. 1 ' Abdurrahman and several others
involved in Ma'had Baitul Ilmi became members, and
in the study sessions at his house, he began to focus
his preaching on the dangers of "Christianisation".
After Fajar settled in Palembang, hiring himself out as
an English teacher, he joined Abdurrahman's study
group and began leading discussions of a much more
political nature, about how Muslims were being
slaughtered in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine and the
need to wage jihad in response. 16
Sometime thereafter - Sugandi recalls it as November
2004 but it might have been earlier - Sabit, the Afghan
veteran from Cilacap, made his first visit to Sugandi's
school. 17 He and Abdul Aziz were accompanying Ali
Taufik Ahmed is the son of the late Darul Islam leader,
Ahmed Husein, who helped recruit Abu Bakar Ba'asyir into
the DI organisation in 1976, and who worked closely with
Abu Rusdan's father, Haji Faleh.
12 "The Fajar Taslim Story", op. cit.
13 Ibid. He also recalls that at one stage his eldest son, then
five years old, was forcibly taken away to a pesantren, be-
cause JI cadres were worried that his tendency to chatter in
English would give them away.
14 Ibid.
13 The Palembang chapter had no regular communication
with the national office of FAKTA in Jakarta, led by Abu
Deedat.
16 Testimony of Agustiwarman, 11 September 2008, in trial
dossier Berkas Perkara No.Pol. BP/05/IX/2008/ Densus, 25
September 2008.
17 In the course of his 2009 trial, Fajar revealed that he had
known Sabit in Malaysia. (See Abdurrahman Taib, "Pledoi
di Pengadilan Jakarta Selatan", 31 March 2009.) This may
have been when he was first inducted into JI in 1998, when
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Crisis Group Asia Briefing N°92, 20 May 2009
Page 5
Masyhudi back, but it may not have been a coincidence
that they came just weeks after the Australian embassy
bombing of 9 September 2004. 18 They stayed at Sugandi's
school for a week, during which Sabit tried to convince
Sugandi to join his group - which was apparently
closely linked to Noordin Top. 19 Sugandi, whose own
lectures focused on the theory of jihad but not on the
need for immediate operations, declined. He asked
Sabit for help, however, in recruiting more teachers
for the school.
In late December 2004, just after the tsunami devas-
tated Aceh - a chronological marker that everyone in
Indonesia remembers - Sabit found a young unem-
ployed man named Sukarso Abdillah, then studying
the Quran with an imam in Cilacap. Sabit told him
how to get to Sugandi's school, and Sukarso left to
take up his new job, together with two other young
men, Helmi Hanafi and Yudho Hastoyo alias Yudo,
who also were Sabit's proteges. 20 In addition to teach-
ing, Sukarso worked as a tapper in Sugandi's small-
holder rubber plantation and did odd jobs around the
pesantren. He also stayed in touch with Sabit - every
year when he went home to see his family for the
holiday at the end of Ramadan, Sabit would get in
touch. 21
In early 2005, Sugandi went to Purbalingga to visit
his in-laws, and then on to Kudus to see the man he
called "my superior" in JI, Taufik Ahmad alias Abu
Arinah - the same man who had been responsible for
hiding Fajar Taslim in 2002-2003. Sugandi says he
asked Taufik about Sabit, and Taufik replied that Sabit's
thinking was not in line with theirs; he was now "out-
side our group", that is, outside the JI mainstream. 22
the JI school, Lukmanul Hakiem, in Johor, Malaysia was
still flourishing. If Sabit had known Fajar was in Palem-
bang, one would think they would have tried to make con-
tact, but there is no indication at the time of this visit that
Sugandi had met Fajar yet or that Fajar and Sabit were in
communication.
18 There is no mention in any of the testimonies of the
impact of the bombing, nor did police interrogators ask
about it, but it must have been discussed in these circles at
the time.
19 Testimony of Ani Sugandi, 15 September 2008, in trial
dossier Berkas Perkara No.Pol. BP/05/IX/2008/ Densus, 25
September 2008. At this point, Noordin was moving be-
tween Pekalongan and Semarang, but was actively trying to
recruit people through couriers. See Crisis Group Report
Terrorism in Indonesia: Noordin' s Networks, op. cit.
20 Testimony of Sukarso Abdillah, 8 July 2008, and Ani
Sugandi, 15 September 2008, in trial dossier Berkas Per-
kara No.Pol. BP/05/IX/2008/ Densus, 25 September 2008.
21 Testimony of Sukarso Abdillah, op. cit.
22 Testimony of Ani Sugandi, op. cit.
Taufik's response was in line with his close friend
Abu Rusdan's instructions to Fajar Taslim and his
friends in early 2002: after the first Bali bombs, JI
was not interested in further al-Qaeda-style operations.
Noordin Top, however, went his own way, first with
the Marriott bombing in August 2003 and the Austra-
lian embassy bombing in September 2004, and now
Sabit was talking about continuing in the same fashion.
One question is how much Taufik knew (or knows)
about Sabit's group and who was involved. Another is
how much Taufik told Sugandi about Fajar Taslim. By
this time, Fajar had revealed his true identity to Ab-
durrahman and another FAKTA member, Agustia-
warman, who were shocked - until then, they had
thought JI was a completely fictitious organisation,
created by the U.S. to justify bringing the war on ter-
ror to Indonesia. 23 If Sugandi was not told about Fajar
by Taufik or Sabit, he would have learned shortly
anyway.
A few months later, Sugandi went to Palembang to
officially register his pesantren with the provincial
religious affairs office. Since he had to stay overnight,
he called a FAKTA member he knew who suggested
that he meet Abdurrahman Taib, who was running
FAKTA's educational activities. Abdurrahman invited
him to stay at his house and give a lecture to his study
group, which he did. Fajar Taslim was present; so
were four men who would later become the operatives
of the Palembang group:
□ Agustiwarman was in his mid-30s, married, a univer-
sity law graduate, civil servant and employee of
the provincial prison administration. He was one
of the original members of Ma'had Baitul Ilmi and
the FAKTA branch.
□ Heri Purwanto was 23, unmarried, with no steady
job. He was a high school graduate who had stud-
ied for two semesters at a local private university.
At the time of his arrest, he was selling vouchers
for mobile phones.
□ Sugiarto, then twenty, was in his sixth semester at
the Raden Fatah State Islamic Institute, and only
came into contact with the group because he needed
a room to rent. He found one in the house of Oloan
Martua Harahap, secretary of the FAKTA branch,
who ran an internet cafe out of his home. Sugiarto
worked part-time as a computer technician for Oloan;
he was later selected for special training in bomb-
making.
23 "The Fajar Taslim Story", op. cit., and Abdurrahman Taib,
"Pledoi", op. cit.
Indonesia: Radicalisation of the "Palembang Group"
Crisis Group Asia Briefing N°92, 20 May 2009
Page 6
□ Wahyudi, then 32, with only a junior high school
education, seems to have been unmarried with no
steady employment. He had worked for three months
as a helper in an auto mechanic's shop, and at the
time of his arrest was working as a night watchman
at the home of the parents of a FAKTA officer.
From this point on, there began to be sporadic commu-
nication between the two groups: Abdurrahman would
occasionally come to Sugandi's pesantren, especially
after he enrolled his son there; Sugandi would stay
with Abdurrahman whenever he had business in the
city. By mid-2005, Fajar's jihadi influence was
already beginning to make itself felt on the FAKTA
group. A more charismatic figure was about to arrive
at al-Furqon who would reinforce that process.
IV. SULTHON QOLBI ARRIVES
Sometime around August 2005, another fugitive named
Sulthon Qolbi arrived at Sugandi's school with his wife. 24
He was a leader of Mujahidin KOMPAK (Komite Aksi
Penanggulangan Akibat Krisis, roughly Action Com-
mittee for Crisis Response) from Madura who lived in
Ambon from 1999 to 2005, took part in numerous
attacks there, then fled after a wave of arrests began
in May-June 2005." In Ambon he used the aliases
Asadollah and Arsyad. In Palembang, he became known
as Ustad Abum.
In his defence plea, Sugandi said he never invited
Sulthon to his school, but as a Muslim, he had no
choice but to take in a fellow human being in need. 26
He said a man named Rusdi alias Azmi, a graduate of
al-Husein pesantren, the now defunct Jl-linked school
From the testimony he gave in Ambon, Sulthon was in
hiding in Ambon for about two weeks from 18 May. He
then left for Surabaya and Madura, where he stayed about a
month or slightly longer. The earliest he could have arrived
in Palembang would thus have been July and it was
probably a litde later. Fajar in "The Fajar Taslim Story"
mentions Sulthon' s wife was in the pesantren with him.
2j Sulthon was on the police wanted list in connection with
an attack on a Brimob post in Loki, West Ceram, in May
2005. According to the interrogation deposition prepared in
February 2007 before his trial in Ambon, he was involved
in the February 2005 attack on the ship Lailai 7; the March
2005 car bomb attack in Batu Merah and the Lateri bom-
bing, both in Ambon; and the Loki attack (in his deposition
he said he gave the orders and held planning meetings at
his house; in the testimony of another participant, he also
supplied the weapons used). See testimony of Sulthon Qolbi,
BAP No.Pol. T/18.a/II/2007/ Ditreskrim, February 2007.
26 Ani Sugandi, "Rislalah Pembelaan di Pengadilan Negeri
Jakarta Selatan", Jakarta, 31 March 2009.
in Indramayu, suddenly showed up at his door with
Sulthon Qolbi, saying they had been told about Sugandi
by a mutual acquaintance, Zamzam, whom Sugandi
does not remember. 27
A week after he arrived, Sulthon told Sugandi that he
had been involved in a number of incidents in Ambon
and was wanted by police. Sugandi said he could stay
as an Arabic instructor, but Sulthon immediately began
preaching a more confrontational line than Sugandi
himself was comfortable with. He taught that jihad
against Jews and Christians was an individual obligation
(fardu 'airi) because they were occupying Muslim
lands, urged jihad against the Indonesian government
because it did not apply Islamic law and argued that
Muslims should make war on the U.S. and its allies
because they were responsible for crimes against the
Muslim world. He also regaled his listeners with tales
of his exploits in Ambon, including attacks on
Christian villages. 28 Much later, after Sulthon was
arrested, tried, convicted and sent to prison in Ambon,
prison authorities asked to have him moved because
he was so successful in recruiting other prisoners. 29
Like Fajar, he was a natural leader, with immense
personal charm.
After Sulthon had been teaching for several months,
Abdurrahman Taib arrived to visit his son, accompa-
nied by members of his study circle: Agustiawarman,
Heri Purwanto, Sugiarto and Fajar. Fajar recalls the
visit as March 2006 but it may have been a little
earlier. They wanted to meet Sugandi, but since he was
busy with other things, he left them with Sulthon.
They were deeply impressed by his passion and reli-
gious knowledge, particularly Fajar, who acknowledged
frankly that his own lectures were beginning to wear
thin, and this man infused new spirit into the group. 30
After that initial meeting, Abdurrahman's group came
regularly to see Sulthon. Relations between Sugandi
and Sulthon deteriorated, however, as their ideologi-
cal differences became more pronounced.
In May 2006, Fajar got a shock when one of his
employers at the Cambrichindo English language
institute told him that four men had come around,
asking if he or a Singaporean named Mohammad
' Sukarso Abdillah, the young teacher from Cilacap, tells a
different story. He said Sugandi was still trying to increase
his teaching staff, and sent word to a friend in Madura
named Rusdi that he needed another instructor. Some months
later, Rusdi showed up with Sulthon, and left him there to
teach. Sukarso Abdillah testimony, op. cit.
28 Ibid, and Ani Sugandi testimony, op. cit.
29 Crisis Group interview, police official, Ambon, 30 March
2007.
30 "The Fajar Taslim Story", op. cit.
Indonesia: Radicalisation of the "Palembang Group"
Crisis Group Asia Briefing N°92, 20 May 2009
Page 7
Hassan was working there. Panicked, he called all the
places he was teaching and asked for leave on the
grounds that his father was ill. Then he asked Agustia-
warman to take him to Sugandi's pesantren. Three
days later, his wife and child followed. Sugandi agreed
to take them in, on the grounds that they stay quietly
in the pesantren and not go anywhere or do anything.
For the next three months Fajar and Sulthon over-
lapped at the pesantren, both committed jihadis but
Sulthon more reluctant to contemplate a new operation
because he was still being hunted by police. 31 Fajar
decided to try and prod him into action - "I kept
provoking him for a month", he recalled proudly. 32
Eventually Sulthon capitulated and agreed to join
their group. Around late July or early August, Fajar
left Sugandi's school to go back to Palembang, in part
because he worried that the young FAKTA members
would lose their enthusiasm for jihad in his absence.
A week later, Sulthon followed. 33 Fajar found a place to
live in Sumbawa village, about 10km outside Palembang.
It was here, sometime in August 2006, that members
of the Palembang group gathered to form a new
jama'ah. The meeting - outside, at night, in the middle
of a rubber plantation - underscored the clandestine
nature of the new organisation, set up to undertake
operations against Islam's enemies. 34 The initial mem-
bers were Abdurrahman Taib, Fajar Taslim, Sulthon
Qolbi, Heri Purwanto, Agustiawarman, Sugiarto, Wah-
yudi, a local villager named Yosi and Oloan Martua
Harahap, the FAKTA secretary who employed Sugi-
arto. They chose Abdurrahman Taib as their amir and
swore an oath of loyalty to him. Sugandi and Sukarso
Abdillah attended the meeting but did not take the
oath, on the grounds that they were already bound to
another organisation - presumably JI.
The formation of the jama'ah represented the efforts
of three men, Fajar, Sulthon and Abdurrahman Taib.
Fajar found a group of young activists in Palembang
and gave them a new political focus and ideological
purpose. Sulthon may have been a reluctant partici-
pant, but his teaching reignited the group at a point
when its motivation seemed to be waning. Abdurrah-
man Taib was a local player eager to strut on a larger
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
33 Sugandi says by the time he left, Sulthon had been about
ten months at his pesantren. If he arrived in July 2005, this
would have made his departure around May. It is more
likely then that he arrived somewhat later than Sugandi
remembers, in August or September 2005.
34 Abdurrahman Taib testimony, 12 September 2008, in
Berkas Perkara No.Pol. BP/05/IX/2008/ Densus, 25 Septem-
ber 2008.
stage, precisely the sort of person who would listen to
Fajar and Sulthon, and whose study group went where
he led them.
THE BUNGLED ATTACK IN
BANDUNG
The jama'ah discussed plans for operations at the very
first meeting in the rubber plantation. The proposed
targets were all Christian priests who, in their view,
were actively hurting Islam through blasphemy or
attempts at conversion. None of those mentioned was
known personally to any member of the group. Fajar
Taslim says they got the names from FAKTA (lists of
such individuals are easily available on blogs and
websites), but while FAKTA aimed at stopping such
men through non-violent advocacy, the Palembang
group aimed to kill them. 35
The first two possibilities discussed were Rev. Robert
Paul Walean and Rev. Rudy Muhammad Nurdin. Walean
is a Jakarta-based Adventist pastor who founded the
Islam al-Hanif Foundation that, among other things,
translates Quranic verses as if they were Biblical pas-
sages. FAKTA's national founder, Abu Deedat, specif-
ically attacks Walean in a number of articles for
blasphemy. 36 Nurdin, based in Grogol, West Jakarta,
is also singled out in FAKTA publications for writing
books with covers in Arabic and Indonesian and titles
designed to appeal to Muslim audiences, such as The
Most Important Verses of the Quran. According to
FAKTA, he teaches that the Prophet Muhammad had
a Christian wife and memorised the Bible. 37
Sometime in September 2006, Wahyudi and Heri Pur-
wanto were sent to Jakarta for an initial survey for the
planned attacks; Abdurrahman Taib paid for their travel.
Heri came back early because he was ill, and Wah-
yudi called later to report that Walean lived in a mar-
ket area too crowded to undertake an execution, and
Nurdin had apparently moved from his old address
1 "The Fajar Taslim Story", op. cit. For one example of an
apostasy blacklist, see http://pemurtadan.blog. friendster.
com/ and a list entitled "Tokoh-tokoh institusi Kristen yang
melancarkan aksi pemurtadan berkedok Islam di bumi Pan-
casila [leaders of Christian institutions who engage in con-
version efforts with a Muslim slant in Pancasila country]".
36 Abu Deedat also accuses Walean of joining al-Qiyadah, a
sect deemed deviant in 2008 by the Indonesian Ulama
Council. See for example www.dakta.com/view_artikel_
khusus.php?id=5.
37 See www.swaramuslim.net/fakta/html/001/index.php?
page=BB.
Indonesia: Radicalisation of the "Palembang Group"
Crisis Group Asia Briefing N°92, 20 May 2009
Page 8
because he was being sought by police on blasphemy
charges. 38
Fajar claims it was he who suggested targeting Rev.
Yosua Winadi, a 26-year-old Muslim convert to Chris-
tianity, based in Bekasi, outside Jakarta. Yosua belonged
to the Golden-Footed Torch Foundation (Yayasan
Dian Kaki Emas), another evangelical organisation on
FAKTA's blacklist. Led by converts from Islam, it
uses materials in Arabic to preach Christian values to
Muslims. 39 Yosua had been a pesantren student in
Lamongan, East Java, was himself fluent in Arabic, and
had issued a CD with songs in Arabic in the style of
Muslim music that praised Jesus. 40
Wahyudi managed to find out that Yosua would be in-
augurating a new Christian school in Bandung in a
few weeks and was temporarily living there. He then
got a new assignment from Palembang: go to Bandung,
find Yosua and pretend to become his student. It
turned out Oloan Harahap had a friend, Timotius, who
could introduce Wahyudi to the young pastor. Calling
himself Gunawan, Wahyudi went to Yosua's house,
professed an interest in studying Christianity, and was
welcomed as a guest. Yosua started teaching him the
Bible that night. 41
About a week later, Timotius called from Jakarta, saying
that Abdurrahman Taib, Heri Purwanto and Yosi had
arrived from Palembang. Since Yosua coincide ntally
had an engagement just outside Jakarta, Wahyudi asked
to go along. He told Yosua that he had three friends
who had just arrived in Jakarta and were also inter-
ested in becoming Christians, made the introductions
to the travellers, and the following day, the whole
group left together for Bandung. 42
The next day, 16 October 2006, Timotius called Yosua
and said he wanted to make a contribution to his
Christian outreach activities and asked if they could
meet that evening in Lembang, a resort town just out-
side Bandung. Yosua agreed, and Timotius said he
would send his driver to Yosua's house. That evening,
Sulthon, who had been designated in Palembang as
Testimony of Wahyudi, 5 July 2008 in trial dossier Ber-
kas Perkara No.Pol. BP/05/IX/2008/ Densus, 25 September
2008.
39 The founder of Yayasan (Foundation) Dian Kaki Emas,
Rev. Edi Sapto, is a convicted murderer who found Chris-
tianity in prison and became a pastor after his release. A
native of Madura, he is a frequent target of attacks in the
hardline Islamic media. See for example http://swaramuslim.net/
fakta/more.php?id=5574_0_16_0_M.
40 "The Fajar Taslim Story", op. cit.
41 Wahyudi testimony, op. cit.
42 Crisis Group interview, Bandung, 2007.
the executioner and who had arrived in Bandung
separately, showed up at Yosua's house with another
man named Iwan, described by Abdurrahman Taib as
an ikhwan. u Yosua gave Iwan the keys to his car, got
in beside him with Wahyudi and Sulthon sat in the back,
and they started on the road to Lembang.
When they reached a deserted stretch of road, the less
than foolproof murder plan began to go into oper-
ation. One of the men in the back reached forward
and put a plastic string around Yosua's neck while the
other began pounding on his head with a wooden
hammer with nails embedded in it: the group had
nothing fancier. 44 Fajar Taslim wrote:
I still remember Ust. Abum [Sulthon] wrapping up
a hammer from the home of Abdurrahman, and I
said, "What, you're going to use a hammer? Don't
use a hammer, use rope!" 45
Yosua managed to open the door of the car and throw
himself out, with no life -threatening injuries. Unnerved,
Iwan sped off with Sulthon and Wahyudi, only to
crash the car shortly thereafter. A crowd of villagers
caught Sulthon and turned him over to the police;
Wahyudi and Iwan got away and made their way back
to Palembang. 46
After this debacle, Oloan Harahap and Yosi asked and
received permission to leave the jama 'ah, but two others
quickly took their place: Ki Agus Muhammad Toni, a
student at Sugandi's pesantren, and Ali Masyhudi,
Sugandi's protege, swore allegiance to Abdurrahman
Taib. 47 These two had no connection to FAKTA.
Police in Cimahi, Bandung, meanwhile, had no idea
that the man they arrested after a car crash and assault
on a pastor was on a national wanted list for multiple
crimes in Ambon. 48 Some six weeks later, his wife
The term ikhwan (Arabic for brothers) is usually used to
refer to fellow members of the same organisation or same
ideological persuasion. JI members call each other ikhwan.
In this case, Iwan was from Bandung, according to Taib,
and therefore clearly was not a member of the Palembang
group. He was therefore likely JI, Darul Islam or a member
of another group called Jama'ah Tauhid wal Jihad, founded
by Oman Rochman alias Aman Abdurrahman.
44 Crisis Group interview, source who helped Yosua shordy
after incident, Bandung, 10 April 2007. The trial testimo-
nies mention only a hammer.
45 "The Fajar Taslim Story", op. cit.
46 Wahyudi testimony, op. cit.
47 The ceremony took place at Heri Purwanto's brother's
house, indicating how easily family members can become
involved.
48 It is not clear why the link was not made initially. It may
have been that the Maluku police at that stage did not know
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Crisis Group Asia Briefing N°92, 20 May 2009
Page 9
arrived at al-Islam pesantren in Lamongan - a JI
school with strong KOMPAK connections - and
sought help of friends there to secure her husband's
release. Word got back to Ali Imron, the Bali bomber
whose family runs that school and who since 2002
has been working with police, that the man the Ban-
dung police were holding was no petty criminal but
the mastermind of the May 2005 attack in Maluku
that had killed five police officers. He told the police
in Jakarta, who told the police in Bandung, who told
the police in Ambon - and in early December 2006,
Sulthon was transferred back to Ambon for trial. At
that point, all interest ceased in the attempted murder.
Yosua, fearful of another attack, left Java for another
island, and the Ambon police never questioned
Sulthon about what he was doing in Bandung. If they
had, the Palembang group might have been uncovered
much earlier.
VI. GETTING ARMS AND EXPLOSIVES
For the first month after the botched murder attempt
and Sulthon's arrest, everyone was tense. Fajar warned
the jama'ah that Sulthon would likely reveal infor-
mation, and they should be prepared to move. But
Sulthon never said a word. Even when he was reinter-
rogated in 2008, after the Palembang group was
exposed, he did not give up a single useful fact. 49
When it seemed that they were safe after all, the group,
with Fajar's encouragement, began thinking about
next steps.
In late 2006 or January 2007, Sabit returned to al-
Furqon.' The next day, according to Sugandi, Abdur-
Sulthon's real name (in Ambon he was known as Asadol-
lah or Arsyad) or have a photograph of him to circulate na-
tionally. Also, no system is in place to profile certain kinds
of common crimes so that they get special attention. Mur-
ders or attempted murders of pastors or attacks on churches
would be one such category; so would robberies of gold
stores since in the past such crimes have been used as fund-
raising methods by jihadi groups. Finally, while police ca-
pacity has improved significantly in recent years, it would
simply not occur to many district-level police that there
was any reason to be on the lookout in Bandung for a fugi-
tive from Ambon.
49 Crisis Group has seen his testimony and virtually every
response to the interrogator is that he does not know or
cannot remember.
50 Ani Sugandi's testimony places this meeting in 2005,
Abdurrahman Taib's in early 2007, but from the context, it
has to be the latter date. The reference to 2005 could also
have been a typo on the part of the interrogators. On his
return to the school, Sabit was accompanied by a man
named Faiz whom police have never identified and brought
rahman Taib visited with all the remaining jama 'ah
members to attend a taklim (religious study gathering)
at the school, in which Sabit was the main speaker. In
the course of his remarks, he said his group followed
the ideological direction of Osama bin Laden and that
Muslims must wage jihad against the U.S. and its
lackeys. 51 Afterwards, he and Abdurrahman Taib had
a private conversation, almost certainly about procur-
ing arms as subsequent developments were to show. 52
Sometime in February 2007, Sabit sent a short text
message to Abdurrahman and followed up with a
phone call, asking him to come to Kroya, a subdistrict
of Cilacap. They met at a mosque near the Kroya train
station, and Sabit then took Abdurrahman to another
location where he handed over a fully loaded Smith
and Wesson .38 calibre revolver, as well as eleven
additional bullets. He told Abdurrahman that the gun
was for the Palembang jama'ah, to be used for opera-
tions or fa'i, robbery of non-Muslims to raise funds
for jihad. 53 Abdurrahman then returned to Palembang.
Now that they had a weapon, there was a real incen-
tive to use it. They immediately began making plans.
In March 2007, they held a meeting at Sugandi's
pesantren, although he was not present, and decided
to undertake a fa'i operation in Lampung to raise
funds. Ali Masyhudi and Sugiarto were selected to go
to Lampung by bus and do a preliminary survey of
gold shops and Chinese-owned stores; Agustiawar-
man and Abdurrahman Taib would follow on a motor-
cycle, carrying the gun. Once they had decided on the
target, Fajar Taslim would join them. The first four
departed, but on the very first day of the survey, one
of them called back to Palembang to say that Ali
Masyhudi had been arrested, while "going past a
police post with a sharp weapon" (a knife). He had
been riding around on Agustiawarman's motorcycle to
look for a target and was going by a police checkpoint
when he was stopped. These checkpoints are usually
just money-making operations for the local police;
they check drivers' documents and collect informal
payments. Ali Mashyudi had no license and no vehicle
documents, so police kept him in a lock-up overnight
and confiscated the motorcycle. Agustiawarman had
to come the next day and get him out. The robbery
a few more teachers for Sugandi, most from the Cilacap-
Banyumas area. One was a graduate of another Jl-affiliated
school, al-Muttaqien in Jepara, Central Java, showing the
close relations among these schools.
51 Abdurrahman Taib testimony, op. cit.
52 Ani Sugandi testimony, op. cit.
53 Abdurrahman Taib testimony, op. cit. No information is
available on how Sabit got the weapon.
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Crisis Group Asia Briefing N°92, 20 May 2009
Page 10
plans were cancelled as a result, and everyone returned
home. 54
In May, Sabit invited Abdurrahman Taib for another
visit to Kroya, and he went. There Sabit revealed that
he was in direct communication with Noordin Top,
and he urged Abdurrahman to tell his followers when
he returned to Palembang that Abdurrahman himself
had met with Top, just to give them added motivation,
even though it was untrue. 53 Sabit also was clearly
trying to give Abdurrahman encouragement to under-
take a jihad operation in a place within relatively easy
reach of Palembang: he told him that Bukittinggi,
West Sumatra, was a big tourist destination with many
American visitors, and the jama'ah could make them
a target. The idea may have come directly from Top,
who lived in Bukittinggi from mid-2002 to January
2003. 56
Three days after this meeting, Sabit introduced him to
a man named "Aji", a bomb-making specialist, whom
Sabit had delegated to train the jama'ah. Aji's true
identity is not clear, but one possibility is that Aji is a
pseudonym for Reno alias Tedi, the man who escaped
when Dr Azhari was shot in November 2005." Ab-
durrahman and Aji left for Palembang the same day,
with Aji bringing twenty kilograms of potassium
chlorate with him on the bus in a large cardboard box.
As the irrepressible Fajar notes:
It turned out Aji was going to teach us how to
make "cake" - meaning bombs! I consulted with
Abdurrahman and we decided that Sugi [Sugiarto]
was the one to be trained because he was bright
and still young, so he could quickly pick up Aji's
teachings. So I moved my family to a new rental
house in Kuburan Cina 4, near Abdurrahman's house
in Lebong Sireang, and the new place became the
headquarters for training in how to "bake a cake".
It was delicious, that cake, really tasty! 58
On the same day they arrived, Abdurrahman summoned
Sugiarto to meet Aji. In a business-like way, Aji took
out a notebook, wrote down all the additional supplies
that were needed for bomb construction - batteries,
cables, pipes, switches, circuit boards, soldering irons,
glue, sulphur, tupperware and so forth - which came
Heri Purwanto testimony, 12 September 2008 and Ali
Masyhudi, 6 July 2008 in Berkas Perkara No. Pol. BP/05/
IX/2008/ Densus, 25 September 2008.
53 Abdurrahman Taib testimony, op. cit.
56 Crisis Group Report, Noordin' s Networks, op. cit.
57 Reno alias Tedi is a graduate of Mahad Aly, a major JI
school in Solo. He also is reported to have fought in Ambon.
58 "The Fajar Taslim Story", op. cit.
to a total of Rp. 350,000 (about $35). Sugiarto was sent
off to do the shopping, came back with the supplies,
and the training began in Fajar's new house. 59
VII. THE ATTACK ON DAGO SIMAMORA
Meanwhile, through FAKTA, the jama'ah learned
that a Christian teacher in Palembang was trying to
convert his Muslim students and urging the girls not
to wear headscarves. Dago Simamora, 59, was a citi-
zenship education teacher at a state junior high school
in Palembang; he was also a Protestant pastor. Fajar,
Abdurrahman, Agustiawarman and Wahyudi met to
discuss the issue and decided to send Wahyudi on a
fact-finding mission. He went to the school, posing as
a Muslim garment vendor, and engaged some of the
Muslim students in conversation. They confirmed the
information about Simamora - so the jama'ah decided
to kill him. Fajar was made operations commander,
and his first action was to send Wahyudi back to make
a survey. Wahyudi and Ki Agus Muhammad Toni
(hereafter Toni), posing again as vendors, managed to
speak directly with Simamora and found out his home
address. Wahyudi made a third survey, this time with
Ali Masyhudi, to see what time Simamora came and
left the school.
Once the surveys were completed, Fajar chose the
execution team: one look-out, two motorcycle drivers,
one killer, one commander. Ali Masyhudi was origi-
nally chosen as executioner, but Fajar decided he lacked
sufficient enthusiasm and replaced him with Toni.
After determining the alley that was to be the execu-
tion site, the team had two "rehearsals", both of which
showed how many things could go wrong: motivation,
motorcycle problems, traffic, people suddenly appear-
ing in the alley, even the weather. 60 But the team even-
tually decided on a day - 8 June 2007 - and, in their
view, carried the operation off without a hitch.
Wahyudi, still in his garment vendor role, was sta-
tioned a short distance away from Simamora's house.
He took public transport to and from the site. The rest
of the team was waiting in a mosque about a kilome-
tre away. Wahyudi called them when Simamora left
his house, describing what he was wearing and the
motorcycle he was using. The rest of the team, using
two motorcycles, followed him to the elementary school
where Simamora picked up his nine-year-old son.
At some stage in mid-2007, Fajar returned to Sugandi's
school with his family to live for two months, but it is not
clear when.
60 "The Fajar Taslim Story", op. cit.
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Page 11
Fajar ordered Toni and Agustiawarman, on one motor-
cycle, to go on ahead and station themselves in the
alley, but to make sure not to hurt the son when they
killed the father. When Simamora drove into the alley,
Toni fired one shot to Simamora's head, killing him
instantly; the boy survived. Then Toni and Agusti-
warman sped away, followed by Fajar and Heri Pur-
wanto, without anyone following them. Everyone ar-
rived at a designated safe house, changed clothes, and
pulled off the stickers obscuring their number plates.
It was the perfect crime. In the newspapers the next
day, the police said the murder was likely the result
of a land dispute, and it was not until the Palembang
group was arrested in 2008 that the real perpetrators
became known. 61
The "success" of the Simamora murder emboldened
Fajar and Abdurrahman Taib to try something bigger
- the Bukittinggi bombing.
VIII. THE BUKITTINGGI BOMBING THAT
NEVER HAPPENED
Plans for the Bukittinggi bombing represented the
transition of the Palembang jama 'ah's focus from the
"near" to the "far" enemy" - Christian proselytisers to
the U.S. and its allies. The big leap had already been
made from non-violent advocacy to willingness to
kill. Once the use of violence was accepted, the circle
of possible targets could be broadened. Those who
provided the weapons also influenced the choice of
targets: the man named Aji would not have come all
the way from Java to teach the Palembang jama'ah
just to blow up local Christians.
Aji began teaching Sugiarto, with Fajar and Abdur-
rahman Taib closely watching, the day after he arrived
in Palembang. He had a bomb-making manual with
him, but Sugiarto said he found it easier to just learn
by example. In just one day, he learned by trial and
error to put together a circuit board with a delay
mechanism. Over the next two weeks, he used every
spare moment in between his classes at the IAIN in
Palembang to return to the house to master the elec-
tronic circuitry of bombs under Aji's tutelage. Once
he had learned how to time delays for a few seconds
and for fifteen minutes and how to use alarm clocks
and mobile phones as detonators, Aji introduced the
subject of how to mix explosives. The final topic was
how to package the finished product. The entire
"course" took about a month and when Aji was satis-
Seewww.indomedia.com/sripo/2007/06/09/0906H02.pdf
fied that his student could make bombs on his own, he
returned to Java.
A month or two later, Abdurrahman Taib asked Sugiarto
to rent a house that they could use for preparation of
pipe bombs with the materials left over from Aji's
course. With Ali Masyhudi helping out, Sugiarto then
prepared four pipe bombs. The idea was that each
member of the jama'ah would eventually carry one to
look for opportunities for operations, or, if a member
was about to be captured, the bomb could be used
against the police or as a suicide device. 62 A few
members of the jama'ah, meanwhile, continued to take
part in FAKTA activities, suggesting the anti-apostasy
agenda had not been forgotten, even as the jama'ah
had supplanted it with grander goals."
In November 2007, Abdurrahman Taib held a jama 'ah
meeting and with Fajar's encouragement, raised the
idea of an attack in Bukittinggi - using the idea that
Sabit had first suggested. 64 According to Fajar, he and
Abdurrahman assigned Wahyudi the task of surveying
the tourist area in Bukittinggi called Kampung Cina,
which he understood had many American visitors. A
week later, with a bus ticket and Rp. 1,000,000 ($100)
for expenses, Wahyudi was on his way. He found
Kampung Cina without much difficulty and spent the
next few hours looking at cafes and hotels and asking
foodstall owners which places had the most tourists
and when they were most crowded. When night fell
he went to a mosque near the bus terminal and was
given a room for the night in a mosque employee's
home. The next day he used some of his money to
buy various goods small-scale vendors sell to passers-
Sugiarto testimony, 10 September 2008, in trial dossier Ber-
kas Perkara No.Pol. BP/05/IX/2008/ Densus, 25 September
2008.
63 In September 2007 FAKTA branches across Indonesia were
riveted by reports of "Christianisation through making women
pregnant". According to a FAKTA blog, a man studying to
be a pastor had approached a Muslim high school student
in Palembang with the intention of converting her. He pre-
sented himself to her family as a good Muslim and they
began dating. She became pregnant and he agreed to marry
her but on the condition that she become a Christian. She
agreed. Before the wedding could take place, FAKTA-
Palembang learned of the case, and Agustiawarman ap-
pointed a team of seven to rescue the young woman from
apostasy. The family agreed to take her back, and FAKTA
provided religious counseling to steer her back to Islam.
See http://timfakta.blogspot.com/2007/09/pemurtadan-dengan-
hamilisasi.html.
64 Fajar remembers this meeting as taking place in October;
Wahyudi remembers it as August; Agustiawarman and
Sugiarto remember it as November. It was almost certainly
after Ramadan, which in 2007 ended on 12 October, so
November makes more sense.
Indonesia: Radicalisation of the "Palembang Group"
Crisis Group Asia Briefing N°92, 20 May 2009
Page 12
by - bottled water, hard candy, packets of peanuts and
cigarettes. He hawked these at the terminal, both as a
plausible cover and to get a little extra money, and
then returned to Kampung Cina at dusk. He went back
to the area sixteen times, always between 5 and 10
pm, then returned to Palembang to report that the two
busiest cafes were Cafe Bedudel and Cafe Apache.
A week later the jama'ah met to discuss Wahyudi's
findings. This was probably late November. They
decided a second survey was needed, and sent Wah-
yudi back, this time with Abdurrahman Taib and
Agustiawarman. Wahyudi took them to the mosque
employee's house, telling his unsuspecting host that
he had brought his friends to see the beauties of West
Sumatra. 65 After two days of surveying, the group
decided on Cafe Bedudel. Abdurrahman returned to
Palembang, while the other two stayed in Bukittinggi
waiting to hear who would be the "executor" of the
operation. 66 Two days later, they got a call that it was
Toni. He arrived on a bus the next morning, carrying
the bomb in a satchel. Sugiarto accompanied him; his
task was to activate the bomb on arrival, then imme-
diately return to Palembang, which he did. Toni
checked into a cheap hotel, and at 6 pm, Agustia-
warman picked him up on a motorcycle, and the two
of them went off to blow up Cafe Bedudel, stopping
first at a mosque for sunset prayers. Wahyudi stayed
at his host's house, waiting for news.
Toni switched on the bomb as they rode toward the
cafe. 67 Agustiawarman parked the motorcycle about
30m away, and Toni walked into the cafe alone at
6:30 pm. He took a table in the middle of the res-
taurant, placing the bag with the bomb on the table,
then ordered orange juice and fried rice. When the
food came, he moved the bag to the chair next to him,
and sat facing the cashier while waiting for an appro-
priate time to detonate the bomb. So as not to arouse
suspicion of the patrons, he also ordered two bottles
of beer. He calculated that there were about twenty
foreigners in the cafe at the time. He decided the time
was right, got set to throw the switch, but then he heard
footsteps behind him. He turned around and saw a
group of about seven Muslims, including women in
headscarves, coming into the cafe. They sat down at
the table next to him. He waited, hoping they would
leave before him, and ordered another plate of fried
rice. The Muslims were still there at 9 pm, so he
decided to abort the plan. He paid Rp. 100,000 ($10)
for the meal, went out to rejoin Agustiawarman, still
waiting with the motorcycle, and turned off the bomb.
Agustiawarman called Abdurrahman Taib to report
failure, took Toni back to his hotel, and went back to
stay with his host.
The next day, Sunday, they went back to Cafe Bedu-
del after sunset prayers with the bomb once again
turned on. Agustiarwarman waited outside while Toni
went in as before. Again there were about twenty for-
eigners mixed in with about five local men. He waited
till 9 pm, hoping the locals would leave, but it was the
foreigners who left first. Again the bombing was
aborted, and they called back to report. This time,
Abdurrahman Taib ordered them all to come home. 68
The next day Toni, Agustiawarman and Wahyudi got
on a bus, together with the bomb, and made the 21-
hour journey back to Palembang.
Fajar is the only one of the group who seems to have
given any thought to the rationale for the bombing,
other than to kill Americans who were oppressing
Muslims. He wrote that he hoped the bombing would
force America to change its policy toward Afghan-
istan and Iraq. 69 But there is no indication that the
jama'ah members sent to Bukittinggi thought in those
terms; if they had, they might have detonated the
bomb and considered the Muslims collateral damage.
They were following the instructions of their amir
(and Fajar), and there was probably an element of thrill
in carrying out an operation, but this was not a group
of hardened ideologues with a sophisticated sense of
U.S. foreign policy. When Fajar was sentenced, he
said of his two co-defendants:
Ali Masyhudi had a junior high school education,
Wahyudi only graduated from elementary school.
They are good Muslims and good citizens. They
are the simplest and purest people I have ever met.
It was as though I met two cats in Palembang that I
painted orange and black to make them seem like
tigers, then I taught them to act like real tigers! But
when Detachment 88 [the counter-terror police]
washed off the paint, what was left are the two cats
you see beside me. 70
63 Wahyudi testimony, op. cit.
66 Ibid.
67 All the information in this paragraph is from the testi-
mony of Ki Agus Muhammad Toni, 12 September 2008, in
trial dossier Berkas Perkara No.Pol. BP/05/IX/2008/ Densus,
25 September 2008.
bB Ibid.
69 Testimony of Fajar Taslim, 5 July 2008, in trial dossier
Berkas Perkara No.Pol. BP/05/IX/2008/ Densus, 25 Sep-
tember 2008.
70 "Pledoi di Pengadilan Negeri Jakarta Selatan", op. cit.
Indonesia: Radicalisation of the "Palembang Group"
Crisis Group Asia Briefing N°92, 20 May 2009
Page 13
IX. MORE FAILURES, THEN ARREST
In December 2007, there was another failed attempt at
an operation. As Christmas approached, Abdurrahman
Taib called a meeting to discuss an attack on the
Maranatha Church in Palembang because the church
was inviting street children and poor people to take
part in Christmas celebrations - in his view, with the
goal of converting them. 71 Sugiarto, Toni, Heri Pur-
wanto, Wahyudi, Ali Masyhudi and Fajar were assigned
to burn down the church. Abdurrahman went off to
another meeting to establish an alibi, in case anything
went wrong, and prove that FAKTA was not involved. 72
The group left for the church at 3 am carrying seven
litres of gasoline and a pack of matches. But it turned
out a lone fried rice seller was out in front of the
church and intended to be there until dawn. The plans
were shelved, and everyone went back to their respec-
tive homes.' 3
In January 2008, Abdurrahman called another meeting
at his house, this time for a taklim. Sabit, who came
with Sugandi, was present. This colleague of Noordin's
must have been frustrated by the incompetence or
lack of determination of the Palembang group. He
urged those present to wage jihad against Americans
and their allies and generally tried motivate them. 74
Six months later, in June, he called Abdurrahman Taib
and asked him to come to Java again. They met as
usual at the mosque near the Kroya train station. Sabit
turned over an additional twenty kilograms of potas-
sium chlorate and asked Abdurrahman to choose another
target in Sumatra that Americans frequented, perhaps
Danau Toba, the huge lake in North Sumatra, or some-
thing in Palembang. 3
When Abdurrahman returned to Palembang, he and
Fajar discussed other ideas but only to flag them as
possibilities, not as serious plans. They included:
□ An attack on a proposed Singapore army training
centre in Baturaja, South Sumatra. Fajar said he
learned from television and newspapers that Sin-
gapore wanted to rent the site but eventually, the
Indonesian parliament rejected the idea.
□ Placing a bomb in the parking lot of the Supreme
Court in Jakarta when or if plans for the execution
of the Bali bombers were announced.
□ Killing a young American English teacher named
Samuel who taught at a local high school. 76
These ideas were never discussed with other members
of the jama 'ah.
On 29 June, Fajar Taslim's wife called Abdurrahman
to say her husband had been arrested. Immediately
Abdurrahman summoned Agustiawarman and Sugi-
arto, and they moved twenty bombs that had been
stored at Agustiawaraman's house and others stored at
Abdurrahman's house and moved them all to the house
where Wahyudi worked as a watchman. Sugiarto went
to Fajar's house, took a bomb out of his clothes closet,
and dismantled it.
All the other members of the group were arrested on 1
July 2008. According to the Indonesian police, they
had all been under surveillance for more than a year.
The initial focus on Palembang was triggered after the
second Bali bombing in October 2005 by the hunt for
Noordin Top and Reno alias Tedi, Dr Azhari's star
bomb-making pupil. Persistent rumours about Palem-
bang as a possible haven for Noordin swirled around
Jakarta in 2006 even as Singaporean authorities and
Interpol were pursuing Fajar. But even with the surveil-
lance operation in place, the counter-terrorism police
were so focused on trying to find Noordin, and on
outsiders coming into Palembang, that they seem to
have missed some of the activities of the jama'ah
members themselves. Not only did they not pick up the
"rehearsals" for the Dago Simamora killing, but they
accepted the local police's explanation that the mur-
der was over a land dispute. When Wahyudi, Sugiarto
and Agustiawarman went to Bukittinggi, police were
right behind them - except they never discovered they
were carrying an activated bomb. In the end, however,
every member of the group was identified, and the
actual operation to arrest them went reasonably smoothly,
with only Abdurrahman Taib resisting. 77
The trials of the men began later in the year and in
April 2009, all were convicted. Fajar got eighteen
years; Abdurrahman Taib, Wahyudi, Agustiawarman,
Sugiarto, Ki Agus Muhammad Toni and Heri Purwanto,
twelve; Ali Masyhudi, ten; Sugandi, five; and Sukarso
Abdillah, four.
Sabit and Aji were never caught. It is not just that
they remain at large that is worrying; it is that until
the Palembang group's activities came to light, neither
Sugiarto testimony, op. cit.
1 Ali Masyhudi testimony, op. cit.
! Ibid.
' Ibid.
D Abdurrahman Taib testimony, op. cit.
1 Fajar Taslim testimony, op. cit.
Crisis Group interview, police official, Jakarta, May 2009.
Indonesia: Radicalisation of the "Palembang Group"
Crisis Group Asia Briefing N°92, 20 May 2009
Page 14
they nor the network in Kroya was on anyone's radar
screen.
X. FUNDING FOR JAMA'AH
ACTIVITIES
The Palembang jama 'ah operated on a shoestring bud-
get: its total outlay, for all operations, including travel
and incidental expenses, seems to have been under
$2,000. At no time were major purchases required.
There was never any vehicle to buy for a car bomb or
house to rent for more than a few months at a time.
The biggest expenses were roundtrip bus tickets
between Palembang and Bukittinggi and the rental of
the house where the bomb-training took place. The
gun, bullets and potassium chlorate that might other-
wise have stretched the group's finances seem to have
been turned over free of charge by Sabit, whose own
group had a strong interest in turning the Palembang
jama'ah into a more competent jihadi partner than it
ever became.
Not only did it not receive any funds from abroad, but
the amount it raised locally was tiny. The main method
of fundraising was for members to make a simple pro-
posal for a quasi-religious activity (Islamic healing,
for example), then shop it around to local government
offices or banks or businesses. No one ever checked
to see if the proposed activity actually took place or
the organisation behind it was legitimate.
In 2006, for example, Agustiawarman wrote a propo-
sal to send preachers (da'i) to lecture around Palem-
bang, and different members of the jama'ah took it to
78 The Palembang testimonies suggest that at one point his
network group may have included Sabit; Aji (likely Reno),
the bomb-maker; and perhaps Annas, Helmi Hanafi and
Yudho Hastoyo alias Yudo, the young teachers that Sabit
sent to Palembang. One of the most intruiguing friends of
Sabit is a man named Baharudin, a community leader
(tokoh masyarakat) in Cilacap who was also the imam of a
mosque there. Sukarso Abdillah recounts that in July 2006
when he had returned from South Sumatra to visit his
family, Sabit summoned him to his house and asked him to
pose for a few days as Baharudin' s son-in-law, Abdul
Halim. The next year, at the end of Ramadan, Sabit asked
him to do the same. The odd request would make sense if
the son-in-law were a fugitive who ordinarily would be
expected to take part in family gatherings but could not
because he was in hiding or overseas. The only other clue
to Abdul Halim' s identity is that he once taught in Sula-
wesi. An Abdul Halim sat on a JI "amir search committee"
(Lajnah Ihtiar Linasbil Amir, LILA) with Zarkasih alias
Nuaim and Abu Dujana in 2004 but it is not known if this
is the same man.
the mosque of Bank Indonesia in Palembang; the
cooperative run by the huge local fertiliser company,
PT Pupuk Sriwijaya; and other places. From the com-
bined sources they obtained around Rp. 2,000,000
($200). 79 In 2007, Agustiawarman prepared another
proposal for funding a mass meeting for ruqiyah
(Islamic exorcism) and healing; it brought it another
$100. 8 ° In October that year, the group submitted a
proposal to local goverment agencies and banks in the
name of Joint Muslim Forum (Forum Bersama Umat
Islam, FBUI). It raised enough to cover Wahyudi's costs
for conducting the survey in Bukittinggi. The group
raised another Rp.3,000,000 (about $300) from a pro-
posal to the Palembang muncipal government, again
ostensibly for sending religious teachers to far-flung
areas. 81
In early 2008, Ali Masyhudi took the proceeds from a
box for charitable contributions in the mosque near
his home; the total amounted to just under $100. The
jama'ah also secured periodic cash contributions of
Rp.150,000 or Rp.200,000 ($15 or $20) at a time from
friends or neighbours, but none of the donors knew
what the members were planning or asked any questions
about how the money would be spent.
Some jihadi groups have been spurred to violence by
the sudden availability of funds for the purpose. This
clearly was not the case with the Palembang group. It
never had very much money to begin with, and it seems
to have made plans first and found ad hoc financing
thereafter.
XL CONCLUSIONS
It would be possible to conclude that the Palembang
men were hapless bumblers, and if this is all Indone-
sia has to worry about, it is in good shape. But the
Bukittinggi bombing nearly happened, and a similarly
amateurish group with the same bombs, the same
small financial base and just a little more luck could
have a much more lethal effect. One lesson from the
Palembang jama'ah is that groups with no prior his-
tory of involvement in violence or exposure to jiha-
dist ideology can be radicalised through persuasive
leaders, and several of the fugitives currently in hiding
from the police in Indonesia can play that role,
Noordin Top and Reno alias Tedi among them.
Testimony of Abdurrahman Taib, op. cit.
1 Ibid.
1 Ibid.
Indonesia: Radicalisation of the "Palembang Group"
Crisis Group Asia Briefing N°92, 20 May 2009
Page 15
While JI has grown progessively weaker over the last
five years, it remains a concern, not so much as a
terrorist organisation but as a social network. Nine of
ten members of the Palembang group were not JI, but
individual JI members outside the organisation's main-
stream provided the motivation, instruction and mate-
rials that transformed the group into would-be bombers.
This radical fringe is probably tiny, but as Fajar Taslim
demonstrates, even one charismatic person can make
a difference, and the manual for bomb instruction that
"Aji" used is still in circulation.
The 50 or so Jl-linked schools are still important, not
just because they are grooming a new leadership but
because sooner or later, one of the most-wanted fugi-
tives will show up at one. From Taufik Ahmad's remarks
to Sugandi in 2005, it is fairly clear that JI leaders
know where many of these men are, or in fact are
protecting them on the condition they not engage in
violence that would further damage the organisation.
Sulthon was not even a JI member, but he still found
refuge at a JI school. More government attention to
these schools would be highly desirable.
As noted, the Palembang group underscores the impor-
tance of the anti-apostasy agenda in Indonesia, fuelled
by efforts of Christian groups to convert Muslims.
Fajar Taslim insisted repeatedly that his group had
nothing against Christians; it only objected to Chris-
tians who were determined to hurt Islam. Indonesian
authorities need to protect freedom of religion, but they
also need to understand and develop policies to deal
with the Muslim backlash to Christian proselytising.
Jihadism in Indonesia needs a local driver: anger over
Gaza, let alone Afghanistan and Iraq is not enough.
With former areas of communal conflict quiet for
now, fear of "Christianisation" in some areas could
become that driver.
Finally, while police competence and professionalism
has improved rapidly in recent years, the Palembang
case underscores how much more needs to be done to
build basic investigative skills, not only in elite units
of the national police but at the local level as well.
Jakarta/Brussels, 20 May 2009
Indonesia: Radicalisation of the "Palembang Group"
Crisis Group Asia Briefing N°92, 20 May 2009 Page 16
APPENDIX A
PALEMBANG GROUP FINANCES
The following information comes from the interrogation depositions of group members, questioned separately,
but the general amounts are consistent.
A. Income
1. General operational funds 2006-2007: Rp.7,800,000 ($780)
2006: Contributions from a bank and local fertiliser company in response to proposal in the
name of study group to undertake religious activities and send preachers around the city:
Rp.2,000,000 ($200)
2007: Contributions in response to proposal to conduct public exorcism of djinn (ruqiyah)
and an Islamic healing clinic: Rp. 1,000,000 ($100)
2007: Contributions from Palembang city government in response to proposal to send
preachers to remote areas: Rp. 3,000,000 ($300)
Oct 2007: Contributions from local government agencies and banks for unspecified religious
activities raised in the name of Joint Islamic Forum (Forum Bersama Umat Islam, FBUI)
Palembang: Rp. 1,000,000 ($100)
Contributions collected from individuals in the village near al-Furqon pesantren: Rp. 800,000 ($80)
2. Funds raised for the 2007 Bukittinggi operation and beyond: Rp.3,832,000 ($380)
(There is no reason to believe the donors knew how their contributions were to be used.)
Personal contribution from Abdurrahman: Rp. 500,000 ($50)
Personal contribution from Akbar/Salim: Rp. 30,000 ($3)
Funds from a mosque charity donations box: Rp. 850,000 ($85)
Income from an Islamic healing clinic: Rp. 150,000 ($15)
Personal contribution from Pak Rasman: Rp.2,000,000 ($200)
Personal contribution from Pak Habib: Rp.50,000 ($5)
Three personal contributions from Ani Sugandi: Rp. 252,000 ($25.20)
Total funds raised: Rp. 11,632,000 ($1,163.20)
B. Expenses Cited in Testimonies (Incomplete)
1. Attempted murder of priest ($100)
Travel expenses of Heri and Wahyudi to Jakarta for fifteen days
(men slept in mosques to avoid accommodation charges): Rp. 1,000,000 ($100)
Travel expenses of other members of team (not mentioned)
2. Murder of Dago Simamora ($20)
Renting safe house for team to return to and change clothes: Rp. 200,000 ($20)
3. Abdurrahman Taib's travel costs to Java to meet Sabit
(Cost not mentioned)
Indonesia: Radicalisation of the "Palembang Group"
Crisis Group Asia Briefing N°92, 20 May 2009 Page 17
4. Partial expenses for training in bomb-making: $55
Electronic and explosive supplies: Rp. 350,000 ($35)
Renting house, one month: Rp. 200,000 ($20)
(Instructor seems to have paid his own way)
5. Partial expenses for Bukittinggi: $314
Bomb materials (potassium chlorate donated)
6 glue packs: Rp. 12,000 ($1.20)
Pellets: Rp.50,000 ($5)
4 black bags: Rp.100,000 ($10)
1 men's shirt with collar to help bomber blend in: Rp. 35,000 ($3.50)
Nokia mobile phone: Rp. 150,000 ($15)
Wahyudi's first survey in Bukittinggi: Rp. 1,000,000 ($100)
Bus tickets to Bukittinggi for Toni and Sugiarto: Rp.446,000 ($44.60)
Operational expenses in Bukittinggi: Rp. 1,200,000 ($120)
Two nights in a hotel for Toni in Bukittinggi at Rp. 75,000 per night: Rp. 150,000 ($15)
There would have been additional travel and other basic expenses for surveys in Lampung, Jakarta, Palembang and
Bukittinggi; phone vouchers and other communication costs; payments to the police for getting the motorcycle back in
Lampung after the failed robbery; meals and other supplies. The itemisation above, however, gives an idea of the very
low scale of expenses.
Indonesia: Radicalisation of the "Palembang Group"
Crisis Group Asia Briefing N°92, 20 May 2009
Page 18
APPENDIX B
PARTIAL LIST OF PROMINENT FUGITIVES AS OF MAY 2009
The following men are among those wanted by Indonesian police or other police forces in the region for crimes associated
with JI and other extremist groups. It is not a complete list, but gives some idea of the kind of people who can help bring in and
radicalise new recruits.
Believed to be in Indonesia:
1. Noordin Mohammed Top
Born 11 August 1968, Johor, Malaysia; former director of JI
school Lukmanul Hakiem in Johor that became headquarters
for JI-Malaysia. Fled to Indonesia in late 2001; mastermind of
bombings at Marriott Hotel bombing (August 2003); Aus-
tralian embassy (September 2004) and Bali II (October 2005).
Believed to be in Java in 2006, variously reported in Java and
Sumatra 2007.
2. Reno alias Tedi
Javanese, mid-30s, reported to be graduate of JI school Mahad
Aly, Solo. Studied bomb-making with Dr Azhari, helped pre-
pare bombs for second Bali bombing. Fled from Batu, Malang,
East Java, when Dr Azhari killed by police in November 2005.
Possibly the same as "Aji" who gave taught bomb-making to
the Palembang group in 2007.
3. Syaifuddin Zuhri alias Sugeng alias Sabit
Javanese, late 30s, Afghan veteran, in communication with
Noordin Top 2007, arranged weapons and bomb-training for
Palembang group; living in Kroya, Cilacap, Central Java, as of
2007.
4. Aris Sumarsono alias Zulkarnaen
Born Gebang village, Sragen, Central Java, around 1963. Was
in first group of Indonesians to go to Afghanistan in 1985,
arranged logistics for others. Headed JI's military affairs
department. Would have been involved at least tangentially in
all operations up until Bali I (October 2002). Was reportedly
told that Bali I would involve his men but not otherwise in-
cluded in planning. Might be difficult for Indonesian police to
build a strong case against him. Variously reported to be in
Solo area or in Mindanao.
5. Taqwimbillah
Armed associate of JI leader Abu Dujana. Narrowly escaped
arrest in Sukoharjo, Solo, Central Java, in June 2007.
6. Ustadz (Teacher) Rifqi
Real name not known, about 33, Javanese, Mindanao-trained,
began teaching at al-Amanah pesantren, Poso, Central Sula-
wesi, in 2003; taught military skills to local recruits; fled to
Java with Ust. Kholiq, below, and Ust. Yahya. In 2006 helped
sell gold jewellery stolen by JI in armed robbery.
7. Ust. Munsip
Real name not known, Javanese, Mindanao-trained, taught at
al-Amanah pesantren, Poso, fled after police operations in
January 2007. Fled Poso to Pare-Pare, Sulawesi, in January
2007 together with Dr Agus Purwantoro, (a senior JI official
arrested in Malaysia in January 2008), then continued on to
Java alone. Involved in several crimes in Poso, used funds from
2006 robbery of district head's office. One of senior JI mem-
bers in Poso.
8. Ust. Kholiq
Real name not known, Mindanao-trained, taught at al-Amanah
pesantren, Poso; help hide weapon after beheading of three
schoolgirls. Fled to Java in January 2007 with assistance of
Dr Agus Purwantoro.
9. Ust. Yahya
In coordination with Abu Fatih, the JI leader responsible for
Sulawesi, helped arranged the flight of Javanese ustadz from
Poso to Java via Makassar in January 2007. Treasurer for JI in
Poso in 2006-7, in 2006 helped arrange of disposal of gold
stolen in armed robbery as part of JI fund-raising activities.
10. Enal Ta'o
Malaysian JI member of Tausug descent, 31, involved in a
number of murders and robberies in Poso, as well as 2006
attack on the chief of Poso police.
11. Taufik Bulaga alias UpikLawanga
Poso bomb expert known as "the professor", 32, close ties to
JI Solo, responsible for making May 2005 Tentena bomb.
12. Tukiadi alias Ilyas
From Kudus, Central Java. Trainer in Mindanao, studied
bomb-making with Azhari 2004.
13. Asep bin Abubakar alias Darwin
Took part in 2000 Christmas Eve and 2001 Atrium bombings,
thought to have fled to Mindanao but recently reported living
in East Kalimantan.
Believed to be in Mindanao
14. Umar Patek
Born 1970 in Pekalongan, Central Java of Yemeni descent.
Afghan veteran, taught in Mindanao, played major role in first
Bali bombing, fled to Mindanao in 2003, reportedly commands
unit of foreign jihadis working with Abu Sayyaf Group in Jolo.
Married to Filipina.
15. Joko Pitono alias Dulmatin
Born 16 June 1970 in Pemalang, Central Java; Afghan veteran;
served as electronic technician in 2002 Bali bombing; also in-
volved in 2000 Christmas Eve bombings. Fled to Mindanao
April 2003, working with Umar Patek.
16. Hari Kuncoro alias Bahar
Dulmatin' s brother-in-law, Central Javanese, probably from
Solo, Ambon veteran 1999, helped obtain detonating cord from
Ambon used in embassy bombing. Involved in sheltering
Noordin after Australian embassy bombing, believed to be in
Mindanao as of October 2005. More KOMPAK than JI.
17. Muawiyah alias Manobo
Singaporean national, reportedly went to Mindanao in late
1990s as member of the tablighi Islamic missionary movement,
later joined with Umar Patek and Dulmatin, believed to be in
Jolo. Never a JI member, according to JI sources.
18. Zulkifli bin Hir alias Marwan
Malaysian member of Jl-affiliate KMM and brother-in-law of
Atrium bomber Taufik alias Dani.
19. Usf. Sanusi alias Ishak
Real name not known, from Tegal, Central Java, trained in
Mindanao at Camp Hudaibiyah in 1999-2000, planted idea for
attack that led to beheading of three schoolgirls in Poso, Octo-
ber 2005. Reported to have arrived at Camp Jabal Quba in
2006 but no confirmation.
Indonesia: Radicalisation of the "Palembang Group"
Crisis Group Asia Briefing N°92, 20 May 2009
Page 19
APPENDIX C
MAP OF INDONESIA
Map No. 41 10 Rev. 4 UNITED NATIONS
January ?D04
Ceparlmentof Peacekeeping Operations
Cartographic Section
Internationa
Crisis Group
WORKING TO PREVENT
CONFLICT WORLDWIDE
International Headquarters
143 Avenue L ouise, 1050 B russels, B elgium ■ Tel: +32 2 502 90 38 ■ Fax: +3225025038
Email: brussels(5)crisisgroup.org
New York Office
420 Lexington Avenue, Suite 2640, New York 10170 ■ Tel: +1 212 813 0820 ■ Fax: +1 212 813 0825
Email: newvorkfo) crisisgroup.org
Washington Office
1629 K Street, Suite 450, Washington DC 20006 ■ Tel: +1 202 785 1601 ■ Fax: +1 202 785 1630
Email: washington(q)crisisgroup.org
London Office
48 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8LT ■ Tel: +44 20 7831 1436 ■ Fax: +44 20 7242 8135
Email: london(a)crisisgroup.org
Moscow Office
Belomorskaya St., 14-1 - Moscow 125195 Russia ■ Tel/Fax: +7-495-455-9798
Email: moscowfo) crisis group.org
Regional Offices and Field Representation
Crisis Group also operates out of over 25 different locations in Africa,
Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America.
See www.crisisgroup.org for details.
www.cnsisgroup.org
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