Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Singapore warns of regional networking among terror groups (11:23 a.m.)
SINGAPORE -- The Jemaah Islamiyah terror group is consolidating its resources and reaching out to other Islamic militant organizations in the region despite a law enforcement crackdown, a top Singaporean official said Tuesday.
"The Jemaah Islamiyah, or the JI, has been knocked down but definitely not knocked out," Wong Kan Seng, home affairs minister, said at the opening of an international conference on terrorism and how to counter it.
"Despite the regional crackdown on the JI, which led to the arrest of several key JI leaders, the group is repositioning and rejuvenating itself," Wong said. "Much of the JI network and its infrastructure of radical schools continue to operate in the region; they know they are under watch and are consolidating their strength."
The al-Qaida-linked terror group has been blamed for a host of attacks and plots throughout Southeast Asia, including the 2002 Bali nightclub attacks that killed 202 people, a blast at Jakarta's J.W. Marriott hotel the following year that killed 12, and a suicide car bombing at the Australian Embassy in the Indonesian capital last September that killed 10.
"Those JI terrorists who seek to mount operations are not using JI members but are leveraging on the support and resources of fraternal groups," Wong said. He noted that Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists provided direction for the bombing of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta last year, but that most of those involved in the attack were not JI members.
Wong spoke at a conference called Global Security Asia 2005, a gathering of thousands of defense and security officials from the Asia-Pacific region, as well as business executives from companies that provide security services and products.
JI recruits are believed to be training in Mindanao in the southern Philippines, and an Indonesian terror suspect was arrested in connection with bombings last month that killed eight people in three Philippine cities. Wong said those attacks "demonstrated a high level of coordination involving a number of fraternal groups" and warned that "greater collaborative networking" could lead to the spread of terror methods linked to al-Qaida.
"This is a trend that bears watching. More than that, it underlines the urgent need to disrupt and dismantle the training sites in Mindanao which continue to train these jihadist fraternal groups in the region," Wong said. "What may be occurring in these camps is that the previous segregation of JI and other groups, including local Filipino trainees, is no longer observed."
The Singaporean minister also said he was concerned that regional or international terrorist groups could establish strong links with the Islamic insurgency in southern Thailand.
"If this happens, it will have serious ramifications for the entire region," he said. (AP)
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