Cooperation nets terrorist suspect

Terrorists, like smugglers and pirates, tend to congregate in geographical backwaters.

The arrest of an alleged terrorist leader Sunday night on Indonesia's Bintan island near Singapore is shedding light on how easily local maritime borders have been exploited by groups tied to Al Qaeda - and the progress that Southeast Asia's governments here are making in bringing them under control.

Mas Selamat Kastari was caught more than a year after he went underground with the other members of his five-man Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) cell. The JI has been blamed for the Bali nightclub attacks that killed 190 people last August and a string of lesser attacks in Southeast Asia dating back to 1999.

Mas Selamat, a JI cell leader, had been enraged by the arrest of other alleged JI members in 2001 and was planning to hijack an airliner and crash it into the city's Changi Airport, say Singapore officials.

Instead, an informant tipped off investigators about his cell's existence and the group bolted to Indonesia through the Riau Archipelago just south of Singapore - the same island group famed for piracy and smuggling - where he was finally brought to ground.

Erwin Mappaseng, the head of Indonesia's police crime investigation division, told reporters the arrest was made thanks to intelligence provided by Singapore.

Mas Selamat is not thought to have participated in the Bali attacks. But the fact that Indonesia cooperated in the arrest, say investigators, is cause for cheer. Until now Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, had been reluctant to move against alleged members of the network unless they had been involved in crimes on Indonesian soil. But all of Mas Selamat's activities were thought to be outside Indonesia.

"This is a significant arrest because it shows that Indonesia is finally willing to go after the broader network,'' says Rohan Kumar Gunaratna, a political scientist and terrorism expert. A Singapore government official praised "the close cooperation" with Indonesia in the arrest.

New evidence being uncovered by the investigations into the Bali blast - and the interrogations of alleged JI members - shows the Riau archipelago to be crisscrossed with the tracks of men tied to almost every major recent terrorist attack in the region. While officials have long known that money and ideas flowed freely around the region, they're now coming to see the ease with which JI operatives switched countries.

"This terror network has always been a regional terror network, and insufficient border controls helped it to grow,'' says Gunaratna.

Take Imam Samudra, the admitted field commander of the Bali attack. He made Batam island in Riau, next to Bintan, almost a second home before leading a bombing attack on four Batam churches on Christmas Eve 2000, according to his deposition by the Indonesian police, a copy of which was read by the Monitor. The Batam attacks were a subset of what, in hindsight, was the JI's deadly "coming out party" - 20 simultaneous attacks on churches in nine Indonesian cities that Christmas.

BATAM was an ideal site for planning the attack, because it was so easy to bring in outside expertise and support, Mr. Samudra told investigators.

For instance, days before the attack, two Singaporean JI members, Hashim bin Abas and Jafar bin Mistooki, hopped on the ferry to Batam to help Samudra's five-man team to prepare and plant the bombs, according to Samudra.

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