Saudi teacher on trial for funding Jakarta hotel bombs

The hotels are in Jakarta's central business district

A retired Saudi Arabian schoolteacher has been charged with providing the funds for the deadly attacks on two luxury hotels in Jakarta last July.

Al Khelaiw Ali Abdullah, 55, is accused of funnelling money through an internet cafe in West Java.

He is the fourth person to go on trial this month over the Jakarta bombings - along with the suspected driver, bag-man and helpers in the attacks.

The twin hotel suicide bombings killed seven people and injured 50 more.

The BBC's Indonesia correspondent Karishma Vaswani says that Mr Abdullah came to Indonesia from Saudi Arabia in November 2008.

Denies charges

He set up an internet cafe - a seemingly innocent business venture.

I heard two sounds like 'boom, boom' coming from the Marriott and the Ritz-Carlton - then I saw people running out Eko Susanto, security guard In pictures: Jakarta hotel blasts Eyewitnesses: Jakarta attacks Attack waiting to happen?

Prosecutors say that this is where they believe the money trail for the Jakarta bombings began.

They told the Jakarta court Mr Abdullah gave funds to a key contact in the group thought to be behind the blasts.

Prosecutors said he was then later introduced to the suicide bomber in the Jakarta blasts and another man who is believed to have booked the room in the JW Marriott hotel where one of the bombs exploded.

If found guilty, Mr Abdullah could face up to 20 years in prison, but he says he is innocent.

Closely scrutinised

Mohammed Jibril Abdurahman, who went by the online moniker "Prince of Jihad", appeared in court on Tuesday, accused of flying to Saudi Arabia to raise money to finance the attacks.

Prosecutors alleged that the 25-year-old had ties to alleged regional terrorist mastermind Noordin Top.

INDONESIA ATTACKS Dec 2000: Church bombings kill 19 Oct 2002: Bali attacks kill 202 Dec 2002: Sulawesi McDonald's blast kills three Aug 2003: Jakarta Marriott Hotel bomb kills 12 Sept 2004: Bomb outside Australian embassy in Jakarta Sept 2005: Suicide attacks in Bali leave 23 dead, including bombers Indonesia braces for tourism blow Profile: Jemaah Islamiah

The case is being watched closely by security analysts in Indonesia, for clues about what kind of network Mr Noordin may still have in Indonesia - and crucially, whether the funding for the attacks came from within the country or from overseas.

Another trial began last week of Amir Abdillah, 34, accused of being the driver for Mr Noordin, who was shot by police in a September raid on a central Java village.

Indonesia suffered a number of bomb attacks - mainly linked to the militant group Jemaah Islamiah - in the first years of the century.

The country of 240 million people has been praised in recent years for maintaining a pluralist democracy, while punishing Islamists behind a series of bombings.

Jakarta court tries 'hotel bombing financier'

The hotels are in Jakarta's central business district

An Indonesian militant has gone on trial accused of helping to finance deadly attacks on luxury hotels in Jakarta last July.

Mohammed Jibril Abdurahman, 25, who went by the online moniker "Prince of Jihad", appeared in court as dozens of women in black chanted "God is Great".

He faces up to 15 years in jail if found guilty.

The bombings killed seven people and two suicide bombers and ended a four-year hiatus in attacks in Indonesia.

Mr Abdurahman is accused of flying to Saudi Arabia to raise money to finance the attacks. Prosecutors allege that the 25-year-old had ties to alleged regional terrorist mastermind Noordin Top.

Closely watched

But he denied the charges and accused the court of making it all up.

"I think this case is fabricated. I didn't do anything wrong," he told reporters outside court shortly before his trial began.

Prosecutors allege he was studying in an Islamic boarding school in Malaysia when he first met Mr Noordin, who became his teacher, in 1998.

I heard two sounds like 'boom, boom' coming from the Marriott and the Ritz-Carlton - then I saw people running out Eko Susanto, security guard In pictures: Jakarta hotel blasts Eyewitnesses: Jakarta attacks Attack waiting to happen?

After meeting him again about a year before the bombings, prosecutors say he sent an e-mail to his brother, Ahmad Isrofil Mardhotillah, who was in the Saudi holy city of Mecca, saying: "I have met with N., we talked long in car ... Preacher N needs 100 million..."

The BBC's Karishma Vaswani says it is not clear how much money was raised - if any - and whether any of it actually reached Indonesia.

She says the case is being watched closely by security analysts in Indonesia.

INDONESIA ATTACKS Dec 2000: - Church bombings kill 19 Oct 2002: - Bali attacks kill 202 Dec 2002: - Sulawesi McDonald's blast kills three Aug 2003 - Jakarta Marriott Hotel bomb kills 12 Sept 2004: - Bomb outside Australian embassy in Jakarta Sept 2005: Suicide attacks in Bali leave 23 dead, including bombers Indonesia braces for tourism blow Profile: Jemaah Islamiah

They think it will provide vital clues about what kind of network Mr Noordin may still have in Indonesia - and crucially, whether the funding for the attacks came from within the country or from overseas.

That information could help Indonesian security forces as they continue their fight against terrorism.

Another trial began last week of Amir Abdillah, 34, accused of being the driver for Mr Noordin, who was shot by police in a September raid on a central Java village.

Indonesia suffered a number of bomb attacks - mainly linked to the militant group Jemaah Islamiah - in the first years of the century.

The country of 240 million people has been praised in recent years for maintaining a pluralist democracy, while punishing Islamists behind a series of bombings.

Attacks on two nightclubs in Bali in October 2002 killed 202 people, most of them Australian.

The Marriott Hotel was the target of a bomb attack in August 2003 in which 12 people were killed.

Since then, a combination of new laws, anti-terror training, international co-operation and reintegration measures have kept Indonesia peaceful, analysts have said.

Turkey, Georgia, UAE bankroll Caucasus rebels

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Created 02/01/2010 - 20:00

Militants in Russia's volatile North Caucasus region of Dagestan have received financing from supporters in Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan and the United Arab Emirates, television said Saturday, after a special operation yielded notebooks of expenses kept by rebels.

The notebooks seized during a special operation in Dagestan conducted by the Federal Security Service (FSB) on New Year's Eve show the rebels had received hefty donations from their foreign sponsors, national television said, airing footage from the press department of the Dagestan branch of FSB.

"Tens of millions of rubles came from the United Arab Emirates, Georgia, Turkey and Azerbajan," NTV channel said. Rossia television channel added that supporters from Saudi Arabia were also among the foreign sponsors.

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"The sums are huge," Rossia channel said. "There was never any doubt anyway that militants in the North Caucasus have been generously bankrolled. But that generously...."

The notebooks show that rebels also extorted money from local businessmen and unscrupulous officials, television reports said.

"The money was distributed among various groups" in Dagestan and was used to finance purchases of arms, medicine and cars, they said.

The notebooks belonged to the leader of Dagestan's rebels, Umalat Magomedov also known by his nom de guerre as Al-Bara, television reports said, adding he was one of four rebels killed during the December 31 operation in the town of Khasavyurt.

"In spring, Al Qaeda's emissary in the Caucasus appointed Magomedov commander of the Dagestan front," Rossia channel said.

Authorities have also seized machine guns, grenade launchers and 45 cell phones containing rebels' phone numbers.

Authorities have long said that Islamist rebels receive financing from abroad.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in August acknowledged "foreign" elements as a factor fomenting instability in the region, but stressed the root cause of the problem was within Russia itself, referring to corruption among law enforcement personnel.

Clashes between government forces and Islamist rebels are common in Dagestan.

Dagestan's neighbour Chechnya was the site of two bloody separatist wars after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, and a low-level insurgency persists in the region despite the end of major hostilities.

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Islamic militants boosting role in drug trade - Washington Times

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Claude Salhani THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The sea lanes of the South Atlantic have become a favored route for drug traffickers carrying narcotics from Latin America to West and North Africa, where al Qaeda-related groups are increasingly involved in transporting the drugs to Europe, intelligence officials and counternarcotics specialists say.

A Middle Eastern intelligence official said his agency has picked up "very worrisome reports" of rapidly growing cooperation between Islamic militants operating in North and West Africa and drug lords in Latin America. With U.S. attention focused on the Caribbean and Africans lacking the means to police their shores, the vast sea lanes of the South Atlantic are wide open to illegal navigation, the official said.

"The South Atlantic has become a no-man's sea," said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity owing to the nature of his work.

A spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) confirmed the new route.

"The Colombians have shifted their focus from sending cocaine through the Caribbean, and they saw an opportunity to sell cocaine in Europe, transshipping it through the South Atlantic from Venezuela and then to Africa, through Spain and into Europe," DEA spokesman Michael Sanders told The Washington Times. "That's what we're seeing. It's just a new location. That's the route they're taking, for the most part."

The Washington Times reported in March that Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Lebanese Shi'ite group, is deeply involved in the drug trade. Increasingly, however, Sunni groups linked to al Qaeda are also dealing in narcotics to finance their organizations, specialists say.

"It's a weapon against the infidels in the West," said Chris Brown, a senior research associate at the Potomac Institute outside Washington. "As long as the target of the drug trade is the infidels, they have no problem doing it."

Concerns center on groups such as al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM), which operates primarily in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. North African officials say they worry that AQIM is amassing large sums of money from the drug trade to use in financing attacks, with the object of frightening away tourists, undercutting local economies and, ultimately, secular regimes.

Much of the drug trafficking passes through Venezuela, said Jaime Daremblum, the director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the Hudson Institute and a former Costa Rican ambassador to the United States.

"Caracas has become the cathedral of narco-traffickers," he said.

Colombian and Peruvian drugs pass through Venezuela en route to Africa and then are transshipped to European markets, anti-drug specialists say. The FARC guerrilla movement, which seeks to destabilize the government of Colombia, is involved and has links to the Islamists in North Africa, they say.

"Most of the drugs that are available in Spain come from Venezuela," Mr. Daremblum said.

Venezuelan Ambassador to Washington Bernardo Alvarez said the government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has nothing to do with the trafficking and actively fights against it.

"Do not forget that Venezuela is between the biggest producer of drugs [Colombia] and the biggest consumer of drugs [the U.S.]," Mr. Alvarez said in an e-mail. To accuse Venezuela of responsibility "would be like saying the U.S. government is blessing the trafficking of weapons to Mexico, considering that around 90 percent of the weapons confiscated in Mexico originate in the U.S."

The ambassador added, "Venezuela has adopted a comprehensive anti-drug strategy that includes prevention, drug seizures, arrests and extraditions of criminals, destruction of clandestine airstrips, and the monitoring of possible drug routes.

"Venezuela has cooperative anti-drug agreements with 37 countries, including France, Spain and Portugal. Venezuela's fight against drugs has been recognized and lauded by the Organization of American States and even the International Criminal Police Organization."

Michael Shifter, vice president for policy of the Inter-American Dialogue, a center in Washington that focuses on Latin America, said, "Venezuela is a major transshipment point" for drugs, but he said the problem is complex.

"The drug traffickers are having a field day," he said. "The FARC is clearly involved, but there are a lot more actors."

Intelligence officials and other specialists said some of the deals between Islamist groups and narco-traffickers are negotiated in the West African country of Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony where corruption is rampant.

In a recent report, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said there is "a real risk of Guinea-Bissau becoming Africa's first narco-state."

The ICG, a think tank based in Washington and Brussels that focuses on conflict prevention and amelioration, added that "in the absence of effective state and security structures, the country has become a prime transit point for drug trafficking from Latin America to Europe."

The Middle East intelligence official said the CIA tries to monitor the trafficking but cannot stop it in a country where Islamists and drug dealers buy impunity by paying hefty bribes to officials.

The official suggested that a joint tracking center be set up to coordinate data on air and plane shipments on both sides of the South Atlantic.

"If the South Americans know of a ship or plane coming to Africa, they can inform us, and we will track it from here," the official said.

Mr. Sanders of the DEA said his organization "knows there are extremist groups in West Africa, but at this point we don't know if they're playing a role in narcotics trafficking."

• Sara A. Carter contributed to this story from Washington.

Indonesian police arrest two suspected terrorism financiers

Wednesday, August 19, 2009 21:59 WIB

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Police have arrested two men in West Java on suspicion of being financiers of terrorist activity in Indonesia, a spokesman said.

The head of the National Police Headquarters` public relations division, Inspector General Nanan Soekarna, said here Wednesday he could not yet say the two men were really involved in terrorism because their questioning was still in progress.

The two men, identified only as Ali and Iwan, were arrested over the weekend respectively in Nagrek and Kuningan, West Java.

Based on Law Number 15 of 2003 on terrorism crimes the police are allowed to hold suspects for seven days.

If within the seven days, police could not find evidence of their involvement, they must be released but if there was strong evidence, police could detain them longer.

"There was information they planned to open an internet kiosk but an investigation is still underway to confirm if they really wanted to open the business or had other plans," he said.

Nanan said the police could not yet confirm Ali`s nationality, which seemed to be Saudi.

"We still have yet to confirm if he is really a Saudi national or he had just made it up," he said.

Nanan admitted the police had difficulty tracing the source of funds for terrorist activity because it appeared the money was not channeled through the banking system.

Therefore, the Center of Financial Transaction Analysis and Reporting (PPATK) also faced difficulties tracing them, he said.

"If all transactions are done through banks they can be detected by PPATK. However if they are not, they cannot be monitored," he said.

U.S. to Hunt Down Afghan Drug Lords Tied to Taliban

By JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON — Fifty Afghans believed to be drug traffickers with ties to the Taliban have been placed on a Pentagon target list to be captured or killed, reflecting a major shift in American counternarcotics strategy in Afghanistan, according to a Congressional study to be released this week.

United States military commanders have told Congress that they are convinced that the policy is legal under the military’s rules of engagement and international law. They also said the move is an essential part of their new plan to disrupt the flow of drug money that is helping finance the Taliban insurgency.

In interviews with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is releasing the report, two American generals serving in Afghanistan said that major traffickers with proven links to the insurgency have been put on the “joint integrated prioritized target list.” That means they have been given the same target status as insurgent leaders, and can be captured or killed at any time.

The generals told Senate staff members that two credible sources and substantial additional evidence were required before a trafficker was placed on the list, and only those providing support to the insurgency would be made targets.

Currently, they said, there are about 50 major traffickers who contribute money to the Taliban on the list.

“We have a list of 367 ‘kill or capture’ targets, including 50 nexus targets who link drugs and the insurgency,” one of the generals told the committee staff. The generals were not identified in the Senate report, which was obtained by The New York Times.

The shift in policy comes as the Obama administration, deep into the war in Afghanistan, makes significant changes to its strategy for dealing with that country’s lucrative drug trade, which provides 90 percent of the world’s heroin and has led to substantial government corruption.

The Senate report’s disclosure of a hit list for drug traffickers may lead to criticism in the United States over the expansion of the military’s mission, and NATO allies have already raised questions about the strategy of killing individuals who are not traditional military targets.

For years the American-led mission in Afghanistan had focused on destroying poppy crops. Pentagon officials have said their new emphasis is on weaning local farmers off the drug trade — including the possibility of paying them to grow nothing — and going after the drug runners and drug lords. But the Senate report is the first account of a policy to actually place drug chieftains aligned with the Taliban on a “kill or capture” list.

Lt. Col. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, would not comment on the Senate report, but said that “there is a positive, well-known connection between the drug trade and financing for the insurgency and terrorism.” Without directly addressing the existence of the target list, he said that it was “important to clarify that we are targeting terrorists with links to the drug trade, rather than targeting drug traffickers with links to terrorism.”

Several individuals suspected of ties to drug trafficking have already been apprehended and others have been killed by the United States military since the new policy went into effect earlier this year, a senior military official with direct knowledge of the matter said in an interview. Most of the targets are in southern and eastern Afghanistan, where both the drug trade and the insurgency are the most intense.

One American military officer serving in Afghanistan described the purpose of the target list for the Senate committee. “Our long-term approach is to identify the regional drug figures,” the unidentified officer is quoted as saying in the Senate report. The goal, he said, is to “persuade them to choose legitimacy, or remove them from the battlefield.”

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing delicate policy matters.

When Donald H. Rumsfeld was defense secretary, the Pentagon fiercely resisted efforts to draw the United States military into supporting counternarcotics efforts. Top military commanders feared that trying to prevent drug trafficking would only antagonize corrupt regional warlords whose support they needed, and might turn more of the populace against American troops.

It was only in the last year or two of the Bush administration that the United States began to recognize that the Taliban insurgency was being revived with the help of drug money.

The policy of going after drug lords is likely to raise legal concerns from some NATO countries that have troops in Afghanistan. Several NATO countries initially questioned whether the new policy would comply with international law.

“This was a hard sell in NATO,” said retired Gen. John Craddock, who was supreme allied commander of NATO forces until he retired in July.

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the secretary general of NATO until last month, told the Senate committee staff that to deal with the concerns of other nations with troops in Afghanistan, safeguards had been put in place to make sure the alliance remained within legal bounds while pursuing drug traffickers. Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, is also informed before a mission takes place, according to a senior military official.

General Craddock said that some NATO countries were also concerned that the new policy would draw the drug lords closer to the Taliban, because they would turn to them for more protection. “But the opposite is the case, since it weakens the Taliban, so they can’t provide that protection,” General Craddock said. “If we continue to push on this, we will see progress,” he added. “It’s causing them problems.”

In a surprise, the Senate report reveals that the United States intelligence community believes that the Taliban has been getting less money from the drug trade than previous public studies have suggested. The Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency both estimate that the Taliban obtains about $70 million a year from drugs.

The Senate report found that American officials did not believe that Afghan drug money was fueling Al Qaeda, which instead relies on contributions from wealthy individuals and charities in Persian Gulf countries, as well as aid organizations working inside Afghanistan.

But even with the new, more cautious estimates, the Taliban has plenty of drug money to finance its relatively inexpensive insurgency. Taliban foot soldiers are paid just $10 a day — more if they plant an improvised explosive device.

Not all those suspected of drug trafficking will end up on the Pentagon’s list. Intelligence gathered by the United States and Afghanistan will more often be used for prosecutions, although American officials are frustrated that they still have not been able to negotiate an extradition treaty with the Afghan government.

A major unresolved problem in the counternarcotics strategy is the fact that the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan remains wide open, and the Pakistanis are doing little to close down drug smuggling routes.

A senior American law enforcement official in the region is quoted in the report as saying that cooperation with Pakistan on counternarcotics is so poor that traffickers cross the border with impunity.

“We give them leads on targets,” the official said in describing the Pakistani government’s counternarcotics tactics, adding, “We get smiles, a decent cup of tea, occasional reheated sandwiches and assertions of progress, and we all leave with smiles on our faces.”