Word: laskar
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ACQUITTED. JAFAR UMAR THALIB, 40, Muslim cleric and leader of the Indonesian militia Laskar Jihad, of charges of inciting his followers to commit violence against Christians; in Jakarta. The prosecution said Jafar had made incendiary remarks in a speech last April in Ambon, capital of the Maluku Islands, just two days before a gang of Muslims attacked a Christian village and killed 12 people. The court ruled that the speech was insufficient evidence, leading some observers to question the country's commitment to combating Islamic militancy. In recent years, Laskar Jihad has been blamed for the deaths of hundreds...
After more than a year of trying to track down Jemaah Islamiah (JI), Southeast Asian intelligence agencies are now also focusing on another group: Laskar Jundullah. Following December's bombings at a Toyota dealer and a McDonald's restaurant in Makassar, the South Sulawesi-based Islamic group has found itself the target of police scrutiny, in part because of the group's own geneaology. One of its alleged co-founders, Agus Dwikarna, is a convicted terrorist serving a 17-year jail sentence in the Philippines, while the other is Kuwaiti Omar al-Faruq, the top al-Qaeda operative in Southeast...
...After the Makassar bombings, police arrested 16 people, including five Laskar Jundullah members. When they raided the houses of those five suspects, they found semi-automatic rifles, bomb materials and, in the workshop of the alleged bomb maker, detailed sketches of Christian churches. (Laskar Jundullah is openly anti-Christian; Indonesian intelligence officials suspect that the group has been provoking tension in Maluku and Poso.) According to National Police Chief Da'i Bachtiar, one of the men arrested, Suryadi, is an associate of Imam Samudra, whom police say was the mastermind of the Bali bombings and a devotee of Abubakar...
...Azwar Hasan, secretary-general of the Committee for Upholding Islamic Shari'a, denies that Laskar Jundullah, which sometimes acts on its behalf as an enforcer of Islamic purity, is involved in terrorism, and says it can't be held responsible for its worst elements. "It's like asking an army general to be responsible if a rogue soldier in his battalion breaks the rules," he says. When the foun-ders of the group them-selves are detained terrorists, the problem may be more than a matter of a few rogues...
...strike on U.S. and other Western embassies in Singapore and Jakarta, as well as launching a U.S.S. Cole-style attack against U.S. naval vessels making port calls. JI hooked up with the MILF and other regional militant groups, and with al-Qaeda funding established its own franchises, such as Laskar Jundullah headed by Agus Dwikarna, now in jail in Manila after being caught with explosives, to wage sectarian conflicts in Indonesia's Sulawesi and Maluku regions. But as increasing numbers of JI personnel are picked up, the group, like its patron al-Qaeda, is changing strategies. Last week the Canadian...