3000 'sleepers' trained for terror By Martin Chulov November 27, 2002

TERRORIST group Jemaah Islamiah and radical Muslim organisations across Indonesia and Malaysia formed links with al-Qaeda nine years ago, and have sent up to 3000 followers to terrorist training camps in Afghanistan since the late 1970s, a new report reveals.

Many more radical Muslims than previously realised have been trained and then returned to Indonesia, Malaysia and The Philippines to set up sleeper terrorist cells and launch jihad operations against Western interests, the document says.

The report written by US academic Zachary Abuza is considered by Australian Federal Police and intelligence agents as a template on al-Qaeda's links to southeast Asia.

It claims ties between Indonesian groups and al-Qaeda are being discovered at an "alarming rate" and asserts that Osama bin Laden's network has identified the troubled archipelago as a vulnerable link in the region.

"Most southeast Asians returned and set about committing themselves to running jihads at home, recruiting followers in an attempt to create Islamic states governed by Sharia law," says Dr Abuza's report, Tentacles of Terror - al-Qaeda's Southeast Asian Network.

"Al-Qaeda has taken advantage of the political instability and has looked upon Indonesia as a new frontier.

"To that end, in June 2000, two top bin Laden lieutenants, Ayman Al Zawahiri and the late Mohammed Atef (who was killed in a US bomb strike on Afghanistan in October 2001), were dispatched to Indonesia and travelled to the secessionist state of Aceh and the strife-torn Maluku Islands."

Citing an Indonesian intelligence briefing, the report says: "Both of them were clearly impressed by the lack of security, the support and extent of the Muslim population.

"This visit was part of a wider strategy of shifting the base of Osama bin Laden's terrorist operations from the subcontinent to southeast A sia."

Australian officials yesterday described the report as credible and "extremely well-informed".

They confirmed that together with regional intelligence feeds, it had formed the basis for an expanded investigation into Abu Bakar Bashir's JI network and its continuing threat, despite the arrest of his alleged lieutenant and Bali bomb mastermind Imam Samudra. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, while not commenting on the report directly, agreed with its core premise.

"There were people from southeast Asia who went and joined the mujaheddin in the war against the Soviet Union," a Downer spokesman said.

"They were not necessarily terrorists. But in terms of links between JI and al-Qaeda operating in southeast Asia, that's something we have only become aware of in the course of this year."

The report says Bashir, who has been linked to Samudra and confessed Bali bomber Amrozi, recruited hundreds of followers to fight the US forces in Afghanistan last year.

-- Anonymous, November 26, 2002