KEY members of the group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) have dissolved the organisation but analysts caution that the threat posed by the group, which has claimed responsibility for a string of deadly attacks in the region, remains potent.
In a video declaration made at the National Counter Terrorism Agency in Bogor, its senior leader, Abu Rusdan, said JI’s senior council “have agreed to declare the dissolution of the JI and return to Indonesia’s embrace”.
Abu Rusdan, a cleric and former JI leader arrested in Bekasi in September 2021, made the statement alongside other key figures, including Para Wijayanto, one of the most wanted fighters in South-East Asia who was arrested in 2019 for recruiting fighters for Syria. They are still serving time.
“(We) are ready to be actively involved in promoting (the country’s) independence so that Indonesia becomes an advanced and dignified nation,” he said.
Formed in 1993 by Indonesian clerics Abdullah Sungkar and Abu Bakar Bashir, JI – the South-East Asian affiliate of Al-Qaeda – wanted to establish a conservative Islamic state in South-East Asia.
The group was outlawed in 2008 after deadly attacks in the Philippines and Indonesia, including the bombings on the holiday island of Bali in 2002 that killed more than 200 people, many of them Australian tourists.Analysts, however, cautioned that despite the latest declaration by the group, security threats remain.
Dr Noor Huda Ismail, a visiting fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, believes the declaration is the result of “constant discussion among JI elites such as Para Wijayanto and Abu Rusdan inside the prison”.
However, he warned about potential splinter groups within the JI that could use violence.
Muh Taufiqurrohman, a senior researcher at the Jakarta-based think-tank Centre for Radicalism and Deradicalisation Studies, echoed Dr Noor Huda’s concerns, expressing caution about emerging organisations with new names that retain the ideological allegiance and membership characteristic of the JI.
“Once JI, always JI,” he said.
The declaration followed an attack on the Ulu Tiram police station in Johor on May 17 which left two policemen dead. The Malaysian authorities later clarified that the attacker was a “lone wolf” with no connections to JI. — The Straits Times/ANN
