 By Adam Gartrell The video, recorded less than three weeks before the attacks that killed seven, including three Australians, was recovered from a laptop seized in the police raid that killed terrorist mastermind Noordin Mohammed Top earlier this month.
The video, believed to be shot by Noordin henchman Saifuddin Jaelani, shows suicide bombers Nana Ikhwan Maulana and Dani Dwi Permana picnicking in a park across the road from the the Ritz-Carlton.
"This is our target," Nana tells the camera.
"Destroy America, destroy Australia, destroy Indonesia," Jaelani says.
Dani, just 18 years old, says: "This is not suicide. This is what our enemies fear.
"It is an obligation for all. Those who do not execute this obligation are sinners."
Police believe Jaelani, who is still on the run, recruited Nana and Dani for the attacks.
There is speculation he may replace Noordin as head of Noordin's hardline Jemaah Islamiah splinter group.
Other videos taken from the laptop show the Nana and Dani exercising in the park and surveying their target.
Police also seized a letter, allegedly written by Jaelani to his family in July, in which he accuses America and Australia of "slaughtering our brothers".
Jaelani also claims in the letter that Noordin's group is extremely well organised.
"There are those who manage the funds, there are those who recruit, there are ulema who are giving fatwas (holy decree) and directions.
"There are those who guard the mujahid (holy warrior) families, there are those who source cars, source explosives, source weapons.
There are also political minds, filmmakers and couriers, he wrote.
"And there are those who become volunteers for matrydom."
Indonesian police detective Tito Karnavian said the laptop also contained evidence that Noordin's group had re-established links with Middle East terrorist groups like al-Qaeda.
It also revealed how Noordin's group wanted to target the Indonesian government because of its efforts to promote democracy, Karnavian said. 
 Mark Dodd Top was one of four people who died during the raid yesterday on a militant hideout near Solo, Indonesia's police chief, Bambang Hendarso Danuri, confirmed last night. "He is Noordin M. Top," Mr Danuri said. On the run for more than a decade, Malaysian-born Top, 41, had managed to elude police by using a well-established network of sympathetic Islamist supporters and family connections. In a major embarrassment for Indonesian police last month, they claimed to have killed Top after an epic 17-hour siege only to discover he had escaped. The bomb-maker, who fled to Indonesia after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, is best known for plotting the 2002 Bali bombings, in which 202 people died, 88 of them Australians. He was also behind the 2005 Bali blasts that killed 20 people, including four Australians. But his hand was behind many other terrorist attacks. Indonesian police hold Top responsible for masterminding attacks on the JW Marriott Hotel in 2003 that left 12 killed and another suicide bombing one year later at the Australian embassy in Jakarta that killed 10 people and left dozens injured. He is also suspected of having had a role in the bombings at the Marriott and the Ritz-Carlton hotels in July, in which seven people died, including three Australians. Top's end finally came yesterday morning in a small suburban house in Kepuh Sari village on the outskirts of Solo in Central Java, a stronghold of the Jemaah Islamiah terror network. Bali bomb victim Peter Hughes, who suffered shocking burns during the 2002 Bali bombing, welcomed the news of Top's death. "If it's correct, then Indonesian authorities have done their job," Mr Hughes said. "The victims' families can feel a little bit relieved knowing that a main guy has been caught and that justice has probably finally been done." Police confirmed the identity of three others killed in the house, which was stormed early yesterday after a nine-hour siege. They were Susilo, who rented the house, a close associate of Top; Bagus Budi Pranoto, alias "Urwah"; and another bomb-maker named Maruto. Loud explosions and gunfire were heard during the police raid on the militants' hideout. "Despite repeated warnings to surrender, there was a firefight," Mr Danuri said. "A motorcycle was hit, caught fire and they took refuge by huddling in the bathroom. But our men breached the wall as morning prayers came; at around 5am or 6am, we carried out a quick operation in three hours and we managed to disable them." Jakarta-based intelligence sources said yesterday's raid was linked to an arrest on Wednesday of a close Top associate and another raid last month in West Java in which police killed two suspected militants and found up to 500kg of bombs in a house in Bekasi. Top led an offshoot of the Jemaah Islamiah terrorist group known as al-Qa'ida in the Malay Archipelago. Jakarta-based Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group said that although Top's death was a major blow, it was not a fatal knockout against his group. "It's significant because it means the most dangerous man in Southeast Asia has been taken out of commission, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the problem of terrorism is over and done with," she said. Indonesian expert and former senior Office of National Assessments Indonesian analyst Ken Ward agreed. "They've lost a central figure, a person of enormous importance, but let's not assume this is the end of Indonesian terrorism," he said. Source: The Australian
 September 17 Loud explosions and gunfire were heard coming from a house on the outskirts of the town of Solo, a known militant stronghold, as well as shouts of Allahu Akbar (God is Greater).
A police source had earlier said the target of the operation was an associate of Malaysian terrorism suspect Noordin Mohammed Top, the leader of an Al-Qaeda-linked group blamed for a string of deadly bombings in Indonesia.
The source said it was possible that Top was also inside the house.
"Five bodies have been taken out of the house,'' a police intelligence officer told AFP, requesting anonymity.
An AFP correspondent saw three bodies being brought out of the house after the raid ended just before dawn. Metro TV said five people had been killed in the clash, and one member of the anti-terrorism police injured.
Members of the Mobile Brigade, a special police squad, besieged the house in the early hours of the morning and shooting went on for several hours, witnesses said.
Asked about the raid, Saud Usman Nasution, head of the Special Detachment 88 anti-terror squad, said that his unit was "still monitoring'' the situation.
Noordin, 41, who heads a violent splinter faction of the radical Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) network, is suspected of being behind July 17 double suicide attacks on Jakarta's JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels.
The bombings, which killed seven people including six foreigners, were the first attack in Indonesia in nearly four years.
Noordin allegedly also masterminded a 2003 attack on the Marriott that killed 12 people, as well as the 2004 bombing of the Australian embassy and 2005 attacks on tourist restaurants on the holiday island of Bali.
Police believe they narrowly missed Noordin in a dramatic televised raid in August on a safehouse in Temanggung, Central Java.
Noordin was initially reported dead at the end of the 17-hour siege but the body later turned out to be that of a florist working in the Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotel complex who helped plot the attacks from the inside.
Jemaah Islamiyah's ultimate goal is to unite Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and the southern Philippines into a fundamentalist Islamic state.
 Analysts at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) said the group led by Malaysian Islamist Noordin Mohammed Top was finding it "disturbingly easy" to recruit members to carry out fresh attacks.
"More than a month after the 17 July, 2009, hotel bombings in Jakarta, Noordin Mohammed Top remains at large, but his network is proving to be larger and more sophisticated than previously thought," the ICG said.
"Noordin may still be the commander, but he has some exceedingly well-connected lieutenants who made their debut in the hotel bombings."
The twin suicide blasts at the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels killed nine people including two bombers and six foreigners. They marked the bloody end of a four-year hiatus in such attacks in the mainly Muslim country.
Noordin, 41, is the most wanted extremist in Indonesia and calls his group "al-Qaeda in the Malay Archipelago".
He allegedly received al-Qaeda backing for an attack on the Marriott in 2003 which killed 12 people, but no such link has been confirmed this time around.
Police say they have killed three cell members and hold five others in custody, including an Indonesian Islamist journalist known as the "Prince of Jihad" who is accused of helping arrange funds for the attacks.
Counter-terror squad officers arrested the journalist, Mohammad Jibril Abdurahman, near Jakarta late on Tuesday and also raided the office of his extremist website, Arrahmah.com.
Police believe the Pakistan-educated suspect was an accomplice of Saudi national Al Khalil Ali, who was arrested in Indonesia earlier this month on suspicion of smuggling money from abroad to pay for the July 17 operation.
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.
ICG analyst Sidney Jones said Mohammad Jibril was not a known member of al-Qaeda but had reportedly had contacts with Osama bin Laden's group in the past. Source: The Australian
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 ...
Militants behind the hotel bombings in Jakarta also planned to use snipers to attack Barack Obama’s convoy, according to an intelligence expert. A link between the suicide bombings at the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels on July 17, which killed nine people and wounded 53, and funding from a group linked to al-Qaeda is also being investigated, Dynno Chressbon, from the Centre for Intelligence and National Security, said. He said that two of the four wanted suspects, Ario Sudarso and Mohamad Syahrir, had been trained for an attack on Mr Obama, who is expected to visit Indonesia before the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in Singapore in November. “For Obama, they planned to attack the convoy around the airport using MK-IIIs,” he said, referring to a Russian-made sniper rifle that he said was used by the Taleban in Afghanistan and in Muslim conflict areas in the Philippines. An Indonesian police spokesman could not be reached for comment yesterday, but the sniper plot and a thwarted plot to attack Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the Indonesian President, indicate the scale of the ambitions of Indonesian militants may be higher than first thought. The alleged snipers were from a group called the Indonesian Islamic State, which has a training camp in the restive southern Philippines and received support from a group headed by the Malaysian-born militant Noordin Mohammad Top, Mr Chressbon said. Mr Top is believed to be the mastermind behind the hotel attacks, which killed nine people and wounded 53. Read more here ... Source: Times Online
From correspondents in Jakarta, Indonesia | August 19A MAN believed to be from Saudi Arabia has been arrested on suspicion of smuggling money used to finance last month's deadly Jakarta hotel attacks, Indonesian police said today.Police spokesman Nanan Soekarna said the man, identified only as Ali, had been arrested recently as part of the investigation into who funded the July 17 attacks on the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels that killed nine people. Another man identified only as Iwan also had been detained for questioning over his suspected links to the network of Malaysian Islamist extremist Noordin Mohammed Top, the alleged mastermind of the attack. "Ali and Iwan are still being questioned by our team to prove their links with another country and with the financing,'' Mr Soekarna said. "Ali is believed to be a Saudi Arabian national.'' Analysts have said that if the funding for the attacks came from abroad, a likely source would be al-Qaeda. But police have not confirmed any connection between the hotel blasts and Saudi-born Osama bin Laden's organisation. Al-Qaeda has allegedly financed previous suicide attacks in Indonesia including the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, and Noordin's first major operation, a 2003 truck bombing of the Jakarta Marriott that killed 12. Noordin, 41, leads a splinter group of the Jemaah Islamiyah terror network, which aims to create a regional Islamic caliphate. He is Indonesia's most-wanted man and is blamed for a series of attacks against Westerners in the mainly Muslim country that have killed around 50 people and wounded hundreds. DNA tests showed that a suspect killed in an August 8 raid on a militant hideout was not Noordin as initially reported, police said last week. Source: The Australian
 Reports of Jemaah Islamiah leader Noordin Muhammed Top
have been in error as fingerprint and facial
reconstruction efforts fail to verify his death.Fingerprint analysis has confirmed that a man killed by Indonesian police at the weekend was not fugitive terror suspect Noordin Mohammed Top, a counter-terror police officer said. Officials were publicly sticking to their line that only DNA tests would confirm the identity of the body but a source involved in the investigation said Noordin remained at large. "It's not him. We know from his facial structure as well as his fingerprints," the police source said, requesting anonymity. Noordin was reported by the local media to have been shot dead by police at the end of a 17-hour siege of a remote farmhouse in Central Java on Saturday. Senior counter-terrorism official Ansyad Mbai refused to comment on the identity of the body retrieved from the farmhouse, saying DNA tests would confirm whether it was Noordin or not. "It's better that we wait for the forensic identification," he said. Noordin, 40, is a Malaysian Islamist who is wanted for multiple suicide bombings against Western targets in Indonesia since 2003 which have killed around 50 people and injured hundreds. He is one of the most wanted alleged terror masterminds in Asia, and has a $119,960 bounty on his head from the Indonesian government. The police source indicated that Noordin may have escaped from the farmhouse before police laid siege to it around 4pm on Friday. "We were not as quick as him," he said. Police have come close to arresting the Malaysian, who leads a breakaway faction of the Jemaah Islamiah regional terror network, several times and have captured or killed some of his closest associates. They have intensified the hunt since the July 17 twin suicide bombings on the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in the capital, which killed seven people including six foreigners plus the two bombers. Read more here...
August 08 BREAKING NEWS: ASIA'S most wanted terrorist Noordin Mohammed Top has been arrested, according to reports. Indonesian police have not confirmed the arrest, but they have reported an armed standoff with gunmen in a suspected hideout of Top, the alleged mastermind of terror attacks that resulted in about 100 Australian deaths. Shooting erupted after crack counter-terrorism police surrounded a house in rural Central Java as part of investigations into last month's twin suicide bombings on hotels in the capital Jakarta, he said. ``There was shooting between the special detachment team and the people inside the house,'' spokesman Nanan Soekarna said. ``This house was our target,." The news network Al Jazeera, meanwhile, reported on its website that Top had been arrested and taken into custody. ``Officially the police are still denying that they have captured Noordin Top in central Java, but a very reliable source on the ground have told us they captured a man very likely to be Noordin Top,'' Step Vaessen, Al Jazeera's correspondent, reported. The house siege began around 7pm last night in Beji village, Temanggung regency and sporadic shooting could still be heard after midnight into the early hours this morning. Read More here,,, Source: Herald Sun
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
The fanatical Muslim cleric, who is the spiritual adviser to the al-Mukmin Islamic school for children on the outskirts of Solo, in central Java, said if the victims of the J.W. Marriott and Ritz-Carlton suicide bombings had ever held any thoughts against Islam, they deserved to die. Bashir refused to condemn the suicide bombings, saying the use of terror was justified in the war against infidels, or non-Muslims. Bashir was convicted and jailed for inciting terrorism in relation to the 2002 Bali bombings and has not since moderated his views. He is seen as the spiritual head of Jemaah Islamiah, and while he is deeply unpopular in Indonesia, he carries dangerous influence that marks him as more than a mere ranting eccentric. The 1000 boys and 1000 girls who board at the al-Mukmin school he co-founded are taught predominantly in Arabic, and are indoctrinated to his views from kindergarten through to their leaving certificate. Bashir regularly travels across Java to other pesantrens, or Islamic schools, to speak, although on Tuesday, in the east Java town of Malang, Indonesian police reportedly banned him from giving a public lecture. Yesterday, Bashir attacked the Australian, US and Indonesian governments. "The main cause of this disaster (the bombings) is the Indonesian government, which undermines the supremacy of Islamic law. "This (terror) will not end until the government follows the right path." Asked by The Australian whether he felt any sadness for the seven victims of the suicide bombings, Bashir said: "What makes me sad about the bombings was that it involved innocent people being killed. "People such as women and children who are not involved in the fight against Muslims should not be killed. "But the problem is we don't know for sure that the victims weren't involved in the fight against Islam. Even the thought of fighting against Islam is involvement. Everyone that thinks like that is allowed to be killed." Read more here,,, Source: The Australian
Sadanand Dhume | July 22 TERRORISTS love luxury digs, but not for the same reasons as most of us. LAST Friday's bombing of the J.W. Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta underscores the emergence of a new terrorist target of choice: the international luxury hotel.
In the 19 months leading up to the Jakarta attacks, Islamic terrorists have brought their holy war to upscale properties in Kabul, Islamabad, Mumbai and Peshawar. The casualties thus far number about 116 people killed and hundreds more injured. More often than not, the terrorist predilection for five-star mayhem is explained in purely practical terms. Compared with fortified and heavily guarded embassies, hotels, welcoming to strangers by design, make relatively soft targets. Their international clientele, as well as the visual effect of the mangled facade of a familiar building, guarantees terrorists publicity. When the hotel brand in question is American, such as the Marriott or the Ritz-Carlton, the terrorist faithful gain the added benefit of hurting their foremost foe. From a radical Islamic perspective, however, an international hotel is much more than merely a convenient target of opportunity. It also represents, in microcosm, the antithesis of the world that radical Islamists, violent and non-violent, seek to create. In a modern hotel, for example, men and women are treated equally. More effort is expended on segregating smokers from non-smokers than on segregating the sexes. The bar, the gym and the swimming pool are gender-neutral spaces. Nobody seeks to enforce special dress codes on women. Nor would any international hotel dream of privileging one faith over another. By contrast, under the radical Islamic world view, Muslims are entitled to special privileges. This world view provides the underlying principle for things such as Pakistan's harsh anti-blasphemy laws and Malaysia's lopsided affirmative action program for its Malay-Muslim majority. True, a hotel in, say, Jakarta, may place a Koran by the bedside table and mark the direction of prayer to Mecca on the ceiling. But these are innocent gestures, designed as a convenience for Muslim guests rather than to inconvenience, much less to actively discriminate against, those of other backgrounds. For Islamic radicals, who seek to order all aspects of 21st-century life, from banking to burkas, by the medieval precepts enshrined in sharia law, the secular nature of a hotel is galling enough. But perhaps this would not matter as much if it didn't appeal to local elites. In a place such as Peshawar or Kabul, and to a large degree even in Jakarta or Mumbai, a five-star hotel represents an island of order and prosperity in a sea of squalor. It hints at the prosperity promised by free markets and a culture of individual liberty. It is living proof that the worldly can be split successfully from the divine. Read more here,,, Source: The Australian Sadanand Dhume is a Washington-based writer and author of My Friend the Fanatic: Travels with an Indonesian Islamist (Text Publishing, 2008).
A NEATLY groomed business type in collared shirt and jacket, crew-cut and trimmed beard. A bespectacled nerd in metal-rimmed glasses with long sideburns and oiled hair. An anonymous jihadist in full-face balaclava spewing vitriol against the "enemies of Islam".
These are among the many guises of Noordin Mohammed Top, the elusive serial bomber, most wanted man in Asia and key suspect in last week's hotel bombings in Jakarta. The one-time accountant from Johor in southern Malaysia has emerged in recent years as the operational leader behind a series of bombings, culminating in last Friday's suicide attacks on the J.W. Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels. Top is known not only as a master of disguise and skilled escape artist who has eluded an Indonesian police dragnet for seven years. He is also a logistical and technical mastermind and, even more troubling, a charismatic recruiter of young would-be martyrs who is known to have volunteers in the wings waiting to set off more bombs. He also harbours a visceral hatred of Australia, which he has pinpointed repeatedly in his diatribes and is bound to target again in future attacks unless he is captured or killed. So who is the ruthless technocrat who has defied the leadership of his organisation, Jemaah Islamiah, to carry on the murderous campaign for an Indonesian Islamic state? In the 1990s Top was a science graduate studying for his masters at the University of Technology Malaysia in Johore, southern Malaysia, a hotbed of Muslim student radicalism and hub of the Islamist movement. He joined a religious study group that met at the home of a UTM academic and fellow Malaysian, Wan Min bin Wan Mat, who was a lecturer in project management in the faculty of science and engineering. A regular speaker at these sessions was a fiery young Islamic teacher and veteran of the Afghan jihad named Ali Ghufron, later known by his nom de guerre Mukhlas as the controller of the 2002 Bali bombings. At the time, Mukhlas was head of a new school set up by JI's exiled leaders in a jungle clearing in Johore, Luqmanul Hakim, to groom a new generation of jihadists to fight for a pan-Asian Islamic state. The bookish science student Top was enthralled by the tales of holy war. "We were mesmerised by the JI leadership and its struggle," Wan Min said years later after renouncing JI. "When you come into such a group, you cannot think rationally. We were convinced our struggle was correct." After completing his studies Top was employed to teach maths and geology at the JI school, and was later promoted to the role of director. He and his UTM colleagues, who also included mathematics professor Azahari Husin, became the intellectual and administrative brains trust of JI, which was controlled at the time from Malaysia. After swearing allegiance to JI's leader in 1998, Top was promoted to lead its Malaysian branch and administrative headquarters, known as Mantiqi 1. He is not known to have trained or fought in Afghanistan but underwent military training at JI's Camp Hudaibiyah in Mindinao in the southern Philippines. In late 2001, after Singaporean police discovered a JI plot to bomb Western embassies in Singapore, Top and his colleagues fled to Bangkok, where they set up a new command centre under the leadership of the group's operations chief, Hambali. Top and his fellow fugitives referred to themselves as the muhajarin (migrants), a term used by the original followers of the prophet Mohammed who fled with him from Mecca into exile in Medina to evade their enemies and build their Islamic state. It was during their Bangkok exile that JI's first al-Qa'ida-backed attack on Western targets -- the 2002 Bali bombings -- was conceived. It was entrusted to the men from UTM, Top and Azahari, who "received orders from Hambali to prepare a proposal for an operation", according to Wan Min. Read more here,,, Source: The Australian
INDONESIA will continue to live with the threat of terror attacks unless its government cracks down on the militant Islamic schools and religious zealots who espouse worldwide jihad. Last Friday's hotel bombings in Jakarta have focused attention yet again on a network of radical Islamic boarding schools across Indonesia that continues to espouse the cause of violent jihad and churn out eager young zealots willing to die in its name.
Four days after the bombings, investigators have linked them to two Islamic schools that are well known to the Indonesian authorities but have neither been shut down nor had their activities or teachings curtailed. The first of these is the now notorious Al Mukmin pesantren (boarding house) at Ngruki in Solo, Central Java, where the Marriott suicide bomber is reported to have been schooled. The second is a smaller school at Cilacap in Central Java, where a bomb identical to the hotel bombs used in Jakarta was found in July, and which is believed to have provided shelter to suspected mastermind Noordin Top. A Muslim leader in Jakarta yesterday identified the man who detonated a backpack and case full of explosives inside the Marriott restaurant as Nur Hasbi, who is believed to have graduated from the Ngruki school in 1995. Thus the school continues to live up to its reputation as "a crucible for the formation of cadres of mujahidin", and its mission, "to nurture zeal for jihad so that love for jihad and martyrdom grow in the soul of the mujahidin", in the words of its co-founder, Jemaah Islamiah leader, Abu Bakar Bashir. Nur Hasbi was no doubt inspired by his reported classmate, Asmar Latin Sani, who carried out the previous attack on the Marriott in 2003, after which his severed head was found on the fifth floor of the smashed hotel. The connection is no coincidence. The Ngruki school and others linked to JI -- chiefly the Darul Syahadah ("house of martyrs") and Al Muttaqin schools, both in Central Java -- have produced no less than dozens of young recruits linked to a string of terrorist attacks, starting with the first Bali bombings in 2002.
"The most common link between participants in the terrorist movement in Indonesia in the past 10 years has been attendance at those schools," says Ken Ward, a former senior analyst with the Office of National Assessments, who has worked on in a project tracing terrorist networks in Southeast Asia, in conjunction with the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. Ward says the Indonesian government has been slow to take on the militant schools because it doesn't actually know what they teach, fears a political backlash, and seems unable to decide what constitutes radical Islam. "I think it's a big problem with confronting the JI ideology. A lot of Indonesians can't agree on what's undesirable about it, except that they reject bombing." As a result, despite a vigorous program to "de-radicalise" JI detainees, the origins of radicalisation -- within the school system -- are seemingly ignored. "It's almost as though the Indonesians are willing to allow people to acquire radical Islamic beliefs and then later try to de-radicalise them, rather than try to de-radicalise the education system." I visited the Ngruki school in 2002 after the Bali bombings and again last year. In 2002 the principal had a portrait of Osama bin Laden on his door, and an ABC TV crew filmed a classroom in which childish drawings of bombs and sticks of dynamite were scrawled on a blackboard. At a mosque nearby we witnessed the now famous sermon by Abu Bakar Bashir: "Between you and us there will forever be a ravine of hate and we will be enemies until you follow Allah's law." By 2008 little had changed, except that the school has expanded over the years. Read more here: Source: The Australian
 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
 TORONTO - The Muslim Canadian Congress (MCC) has strongly condemned the truck bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, labelling it as yet another act of terror aimed at destabilizing the nascent democratic forces in the country. While evidence is still emerging, the Islamabad attack has all the fingerprints of Islamist terrorism.
The MCC has also expressed dismay that even though the dust has barely settled, apologists of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda have started spreading conspiracy theories in an attempt to deflect criticism from the Jihadis. Rather than categorically denouncing the terrorists and their Islamist Jihadi doctrine, many Islamists are portraying the Jihadis as if they were some sort of a liberation movement.
As Muslims, we are dismayed by voices within our community that apologize for these dastardly acts and view the Taliban as some sort of latter day Sandanistas. As Canadians, we are concerned for a Pakistan that is gradually succumbing to Islamist terror groups armed and aided by ideology and finances from the Middle East.
For too long, members of various ethnic and sectarian Muslim communities have chosen to fence-sit or worse, provide statements of support to the Taliban and their nexus of supporters. The latest suicide bombing in Islamabad is yet another reminder that regardless of Muslim grievance, real or imagined, such nihilistic acts of violence have further marginalized Muslims globally.
We urge individuals of conscience to exert pressure on Pakistani groups and institutions who still view the Taliban as a viable foreign policy imperative in Kashmir and Afghanistan. The Taliban are instead domestic enforcers and supporters of reactionary, anti-democratic Islamist groups. It is the dishonest posturing of pseudo-liberal elite Pakistanis and their fascist Islamist allies that provides sustenance to the militant groups responsible for such acts.
While Pakistan's liberal elites have succumbed to the most vile conspiracy theories that blame every ill on the USA, the Islamists profit immensely from this intellectual bankruptcy and work to sabotage the new government in Islamabad. We urge people of conscience to speak out against this dishonest narrative of false victim-hood that seeks to obfuscate the barbaric acts of the Taliban under the guise of pseudo-liberal double speak.
Murderers who cannot even respect the sanctity of the month of Ramzan, a month of physical abstinence and spiritual introspection for millions of Muslims, and in stead continue to engage in their savagery should be prosecuted and their apologists confronted at any and every debate possible. Source: Muslim Canadian CongressH/T: Shariah Finance Watch
 By Dr. Walid Phares As shown by world television networks, the hellish flames ravaging the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad seemed like a vision of the Apocalypse. That's at least how many survivors of the terror attack that massacred more than 60 and wounded hundreds have described it: "The end of the World." But beyond the barbaric bloodshed and the human suffering ensuing, the heavy question fuses fast: How do we read this Jihadi mayhem and what is the message behind the bombing? When a war is raging, as is the case in Pakistan for a number of years, analysts won't wait for the procedural investigation to determine the identity of the perpetrators of this attack. Local police and security forces will get somewhere sometime. The graver question concerns the big picture. What are al Qaeda and their Taliban gangs up to by terrorizing the people and government of the second largest Muslim country in the world and – more important – the first Islamic nation to possess nuclear weapons? Read more ...Source: Family Security Matters
 By Masroor Gilani in Islamabad | September 21, 2008
THE streets outside Islamabad's Marriott Hotel were littered with bodies and burned-out vehicles today, while weeping survivors in blood-soaked clothes searched for friends and relatives.
An AFP photographer who reached the hotel minutes after a huge truck bombing heard cries for help from inside the burning building, where many people leapt to their deaths from upper floors trying to escape the flames.
The restaurants of the five-star establishment had been packed with Muslims breaking the daily Ramadan fast, and with foreigners who considered the hotel one of the few safe places to dine in the Pakistani capital.
"It was like the hotel collapsed, and the roof of the kitchen fell with a huge bang," said a stunned chef sitting among the debris, his white overalls stained red with blood.
"There were lot of people working in the kitchen and many customers in the restaurants, I don't know what happened to them."
A Polish man wearing just a pair of trousers and clutching his shirt in his hands said he was looking for five people who were with him at the hotel when the bomb went off.
Hotel staff set up a makeshift first aid post in the parking lot, as police commandos dressed in black began cordoning off the blast site.
Police said a suicide bomber detonated a truck full of explosives at the entrance to the hotel, killing at least 60 people and injuring more than 200.
Mohammad Jamil, who was walking past the hotel at the time, said the truck exploded in a fireball and sailed into the air. The force of the blast, which was heard for miles around, knocked him over.
"For a few seconds I was in shock and did not know what had happened. Then I remembered the deafening noise, and how the blast just tipped me over," he said.
A cloud of smoke swirled over the hotel in the centre of the city, giving off a noxious smell of burning plastic and wires. The blast could be heard across Islamabad, and its force knocked out windows of buildings hundreds of metres away.
Fire engines tried to douse the giant flames leaping from the glass facade of the hotel, and a fleet of ambulances ferried the injured to hospital.
"Get away from this place, the building may collapse any time," police officers shouted at people gathered in front of the burning building.
The hotel's owner, Sadruddin Hashwani, who was among the crowd, said he was heartbroken to see the loss of human life at his establishment.
"Allah gave me all this and I am not disturbed at the material loss, but I am really disturbed over the loss of innocent people's lives there," he said.
"Most of the people inside the hotel were there to earn livelihoods for their families."
Source: The Australian
Muslims Against Sharia condemn homicide bombing in Islamabad. We mourn the loss of innocent lives; our thoughts and prayers with victims of this atrocity and their families. May the homicide bomber rot in hell for eternity. May his accomplices join him soon.
 A view of the estimated 10 meter (33 feet) deep crater caused by a bomb explosion at
Marriott hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan Saturday, Sept 20, 2008. The huge explosion
ripped through part of the heavily guarded Marriott Hotel in Pakistan's capital
Saturday, killing at least 40 people and wounding many.September 21, 2008
Two foreigners among Marriott bomb dead. Injured foreigners at three hospitals. Some diplomats were in hotel at time of blast.
A US national was among at least 60 people killed in a suicide attack at the Marriott Hotel in the Pakistani capital Islamabad today, while foreigners were also wounded, hospital and security officials said.
"We have the body of one American national killed in the blast," said Wasim Khawaja, a spokesman for the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences.
US embassy spokesman Lou Fintor refused to immediately confirm the death.
A security official also said an American was among at least two foreigners killed in the truck bomb blast outside the hotel, which is frequented by foreigners, including diplomats.
The blast also injured about 200 people.
Sixteen US nationals were inside the hotel having dinner at the time of the attack, the official said on condition of anonymity, adding that they included several diplomats.
He said the nationality of the second foreigner killed was not known.
Doctor Khawaja said four Germans, two Saudis and two British nationals were among 106 people admitted to his hospital with injuries.
At least 109 others wounded in the explosion were taken to the city's Polyclinic Hospital, said emergency medical officer doctor Imtiaz Ahmed.
Three of the injured were foreigners, a Moroccan, a Syrian and a German national, Dr Ahmed said.
Officials at Islamabad's third facility, the Capital Hospital, said they received seven injured foreigners, including an American and a Lebanese.
The nationalities of other wounded foreigners was not immediately available, hospital official Mohammad Yunus said. Source: The Australian
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By Adam Gartrell 
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