 JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - A group of 10 alleged Iranian drug smugglers, including eight veiled women, were caught with $12.5 million worth of methamphetamines at Indonesia's main airport, the customs chief said Wednesday. The group was picked up at Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta airport with 60 pounds (27 kilograms) of crystal methamphetamine and 5 gallons (23 liters) of the drug in liquid form, said customs chief Anwar Suprijadi. It is the largest drug bust in the airport's history, he said, describing how the group had arrived on flights from Malaysia, Syria and Qatar on Monday and Tuesday. Indonesian authorities have never seen veiled women used as drug runners, he said.
The drugs, wrapped in plastic food containers and cleaning fluid bottles, were packed into hand luggage. But the oddly-shaped packages were picked out by officers operating scanners. "We believe they are part of an international syndicate," he said. By wearing conservative Islamic clothing the women tried to "fool officers in a country like Indonesia, where women in black veils are generally considered to be good women." Nine suspects were paraded in front of the media at an airport detention facility Wednesday, while a tenth is said to have attempted suicide and was in a hospital. A 26-year-old man, who allegedly carried the liquid drug from Doha, tried to sever an artery with a razor blade. Police said they were trying to uncover a possible link to the arrest on Monday of another Iranian and an American in raids that netted more than 12 pounds (5.6 kilograms) of methamphetamines at an apartment and a hotel room in the nearby capital. Deputy chief of investigations Dikdik Maulana Mansyur estimated the seizure was worth $950,000. He said the 35-year-old American, who posed as a tourist to make deliveries to local hotels, faces up to 15 years in prison and a fine of up to $20,000. The Iranian, 40, has a previous drug conviction from 2002 and can expect a tougher sentence, he said. Indonesia has extremely strict drug laws and traffickers are regularly sentenced to death.
By the end of 2008, about 140 people were on death row, including more than 40 foreigners, most of them for drug-related crimes. Customs offices across Indonesia, a vast Muslim-majority nation of 235 million people, were warned to be on the lookout for other possible smuggling attempts. Poor law enforcement, corruption and high demand make Indonesia an attractive location for drug producers. Source: Asharq Alawsat 
 JAKARTA, Indonesia — Children were crowded around a video game console, passing the time before they could break the Muslim holy month's daily fast, when an earthquake touched off a landslide that smothered their Indonesian village. Rescuers were searching Thursday for those 13 children and several dozen more people buried alive, as officials warned the death toll of 57 is sure to rise. Thousands of others were spending the night in tents after Wednesday's 7.0-magnitude quake flattened or seriously damaged more than 10,000 homes, offices, schools and mosques on the western side of the densely populated island of Java. Aid workers distributed provision kits, blankets and medicine, but said they were concerned remote areas had not received help following the temblor, which was felt for hundreds of miles (kilometers). At least 125 people were hospitalized with serious injuries and more than 5,300 others were in need of shelter, said Health Ministry Crisis Center chief Rustam Pakaya. Dede Kurniati's 9-year-old son was with a group of boys gathered at a friend's house in Cikangkareng village, in the district of Cianjur, West Java, to play video games on a rented console. Read more here,,, Source: FoxNews
 By Alvin Darlanika Soedarjo | August 26,THE owner of a radical Islamist website who calls himself the Prince of Jihad in his blog postings has been arrested in connection with the Jakarta hotel bombings.
Counter-terror squad officers arrested Muhamad Jibril Abdurahman, alias Muhamad Ricky Ardan bin Mohammad Iqbal, near Jakarta late yesterday and also raided the office of his website, Arrahmah.com, a police spokesman said. Police believe the Pakistan-educated suspect helped channel funds from abroad to finance the July 17 twin suicide bombings on the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels that killed nine people, including six foreigners. The source of the funds is not known, but police have said they are investigating whether the money came from al-Qaeda brokers in the Middle East, among other possible donors. Muhamad Jibril is well-known in Indonesian radical circles as a publicist of extremist material, and is the son of a firebrand Islamist cleric who has been linked in the past to the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) regional terror network. In addition to the website, he edited a publication called Jihadmagz which espoused jihad or "holy war" against the West. "He chose his jihad path through working in the media. He felt there were many Muslims who were being suppressed everywhere and there was a war of thoughts," Indonesian extremism analyst Noor Huda Ismail said. Police said Muhamad Jibril was an accomplice of Saudi national Al Khalil Ali, who was arrested earlier this month on suspicion of smuggling money from abroad to pay for the attacks. Muhamad Jibril, believed to be aged in his mid-20s, is the son of Indonesian cleric Abu Jibril who was arrested in Malaysia in 2001 on suspicion of being a senior JI member. Read more here ...
The posting claims the attacks, in which two suicide bombers killed seven people at the J.W. Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels, were specifically directed at US business interests and at the Manchester United football team, which was to have played an exhibition match in Jakarta. It promises to release video footage of the bombers' statements. The posting's origin has not been verified, but police say they are investigating. Identifying itself for the first time as "al-Qa'ida Indonesia", under the auspices of Top, the group claims to have engaged in extensive research before the blasts to identify its targets. Top has previously called his group, which is an offshoot of the radical Jemaah Islamiah movement founded by preacher Abu Bakar Bashir and the late Abdullah Sungkar, "al-Qa'ida for the Malay archipelago". Read More,,,, Source: The Australian
“I have no reason to believe that the events of the past few days have changed or lessened the president's desire” to visit Indonesia, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
Obama spent a few years as a child living in Jakarta from 1967 to 1971 after his mother remarried to an Indonesian national.
He told reporters in June: “Oh, I need to come to Indonesia soon. I expect to be travelling to Asia at some point within the next year and I would be surprised if when I came to Asia I did not stop by my old home town of Jakarta.
“And I'll go visit Menteng Dalam and have some bakso -- Nasi Goreng. These are some special dishes here that I used to eat when I was a kid.”
Gibbs said Obama's upcoming itinerary would be discussed in meetings at the White House this week.
However, the annual summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum to be held in Singapore in November could provide an opportunity for a stopover in Indonesia.
Gibbs again on Monday stressed the special importance that Indonesia holds for Obama, saying: “Obviously it is a country with the largest number of Muslims in the world, important to him from that standpoint as well as personal.”
Two bombers killed seven people including three Australians, a New Zealander and an Indonesian in almost simultaneous blasts at two Jakarta luxury hotels on Friday. More than 50 people were injured.
 Soldiers threw a cordon around Jakarta's Ritz-Carlton hotel,
one of two hotels struck by suicide bombers.Tom Allard and Lindsay Murdoch, Jakarta July 19, 2009 SOUTH-EAST Asia's most wanted man, militant Islamist Noordin Mohammed Top, is behind the twin bombings of the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta, according to Indonesian officials, who have launched a manhunt for the terrorist wanted over a string of attacks since he plotted the first Bali bombings. As the investigation intensified yesterday, the families of two Australians killed in Friday's blasts — Nathan Verity and Craig Senger — grieved, with Mr Verity's wife Vanessa and father arriving in Jakarta to identify his body and bring it home. A third Australian, Garth McEvoy, has been identified as being at the epicentre of the blast in the Marriott. Australian authorities are yet to officially confirm his death, but Indonesia's Health Ministry has listed him among the fatalities. Police are trying to identify some of the victims from the attack, which killed nine, including at least four foreigners. All three Australians had been attending a business breakfast at the Marriott hotel in a private room adjacent to where the bomb went off. Mr Verity ran a recruitment firm, Mr McEvoy was a lawyer for the construction services company Thiess, while Mr Senger was a senior trade official working at the Australian embassy. A source within CastleAsia, a Jakarta-based consultancy that organised the breakfast, said it was likely terrorists had targeted the high-profile gathering to send a message to the foreign business community. The senior anti-terrorism official at Indonesia's ministry for political, legal and security affairs, Ansyaad Mbai, said it was clear from the way the attacks were carried out that Top was involved. An undetonated bomb and examination of the bomb site have confirmed that the explosives were similar to those previously used by Top. Mr Mbai noted that the attackers had changed their tactics to circumvent security arrangements outside the hotels. "Before, the suicide bombers attacked from outside … (now) they have penetrated this increased security system and reached the heart of the target," he said. The undetonated bomb discovered in room 1808 of the Marriott hotel had been installed inside a hollowed-out laptop computer. Indonesia's Detik news yesterday reported that the man who brought the explosives into the hotel had set off the building's metal detectors but was waved through after assuring security personnel that it was his computer that had triggered the alarm. Meanwhile, Jakarta's residents remained defiant in the aftermath of the attacks. Outside the Ritz-Carlton hotel a sign reading "We are not afraid, they only make us stronger" was surrounded by flowers and wreaths. Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith arrived in Jakarta yesterday with a team of security officials, saying Australia would provide "any assistance" required. Australian Federal Police are helping Indonesian officers with crime scene and ballistic analysis, and guidance on intelligence matters. Source: The Age
 THE terrorist bombings in Jakarta are a savage blow against Indonesian democracy and society that demonstrate the ferocious resilience of Islamist extremism as a motivating ideology, and the terrorist groups that give life to it. No country has done more, or better, than Indonesia in fighting Islamist terrorism. There have been hundreds of arrests, dozens of transparent trials that have educated a sceptical Indonesian public about the intentions and capabilities of the Islamist groups. Hundreds of people have gone to jail long-term. A society-wide consensus has been forged against terrorism. The biggest and most influential Islamic groups all condemn terrorism without qualification. Indonesia has not done all this to please Washington, still less to please Australia. The nation has taken this stand because it reflects Indonesia's values and interests and identity. Indonesia is not a permissive environment for terrorism. Yet seven years after the Bali bombings, Islamist terrorists can still blow up a five-star hotel, the JW Marriott which they bombed five years ago. In hitting Jakarta's Ritz Carlton, they hit the very heart of Indonesia's commercial engagement with the world. Of course, they also stand a chance of hitting Jakarta's leading commercial and political figures. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, just re-elected President in a landslide victory, described the bombings as a cruel and inhuman act. Kevin Rudd rightly described them as barbaric, said they were an attack on us all and that we remain under threat from terrorism. SBY is right. This act is cruel not only to its victims but to all Indonesia, which has done so well to consolidate democracy, weather the global economic crisis and turn its face hard against extremism. Rudd is also right -- we are all under threat from terrorism. Islamist extremism is an exceptionally resilient and powerful ideology. Read more here... Source: The Australian
AT LEAST seven people, including several foreigners, were killed this morning when bombs ripped through two neighbouring luxury hotels in the Indonesian capital Jakarta.
One Australian man was reportedly among the 48 people hurt in the explosions, which Indonesian police are treating as a terrorist attack.
Suspicions immediately centred on terror network Jemaah Islamiah, responsible for the attack on the Marriott hotel in 2003, when 12 people died.
The method of attack would represent a shift in strategy for JI.
Consular staff in Jakarta are urgently checking to see whether Australians are among the dead or injured.
The first explosion occurred inside the Ritz-Carlton just before 8am local time, followed by the Marriott blast minutes later. The hotels are located in the upscale Mega Kuningan business district in the centre of the city.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who was re-elected to a second term in the mainly Muslim country last week, was “deeply concerned over this incident,” a spokesman for his office said.
Ritz-Carlton vice-president of security Kevin Cruise said the explosion occurred inside the Airlangga Restaurant, blowing out the windows.
“I was in the restaurant immediately after the explosion,” Mr Cruise told The Australian. “It looks terrible with a lot of cosmetic damage and I was really afraid about injuries but there appears to have been no serious ones.”
However, Mr Cruise is still awaiting a final report, amid “incomplete and incorrect information”.
Tom Warden, 25, a Kiwi working in Ritz-Carlton food and beverage, said the blast occurred as he prepared to have breakfast.
“There were people in the elevator saying `we have got to get the hell out of here'.
“The doors opened and the lobby was filled with smoke and everyone was evacuated.”
Ritz-Carlton guests and staff have moved to an area in front of the hotel.
Police have sealed off the area near the Ritz-Carlton and the JW Marriott.
In a statement this morning, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it was checking on whether any Australians were hurt in the explosions.
 By Andra Wisnu, Conservative and extremist leaders have insinuated their way into major Islamic organizations, leaving these groups unable to counter rising radicalism and religious violence in Indonesia, a forum concluded Thursday. Muslim scholars, speaking at the discussion in Jakarta, criticized Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah, the country's two largest Islamic organizations, for failing to bring peace among followers of different religions and beliefs. They said conservative and extremist leaders supporting the movements and activities of hard-line and radical groups, such as Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia and the Islamic People's Forum (FUI), have been taking control of NU and Muhammadiyah, as well as other moderate Muslim organizations. Hizbut Tahrir and the FUI were behind the campaign against the Jamaah Ahmadiyah minority sect, which recognizes a prophet in Islam after Muhammad -- a belief defying the mainstream faith. Human rights advocates have condemned the campaign, claiming Hizbut Tahrir and the FUI used militant groups, such as the Islam Defenders Front (FPI), as proxies to commit violence against Ahmadiyah followers. Read more ...Source: The Jakarta Post
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JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - A group of 10 alleged Iranian drug smugglers, including eight veiled women, were caught with $12.5 million worth of methamphetamines at Indonesia's main airport, the customs chief said Wednesday. 
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