Salim Osman and Wahyudi Soeriaatmadja – Indonesian police will start clamping down on Islamic clerics who are suspected of having links to militant groups, in a reversal of its past policy of leaving them alone to avoid accusations of repressing Muslims.
From the start of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan today, the movements of all clerics will be closely monitored and their speeches at religious lectures and sermons recorded on tape by the police, said national police spokesman Nanan Sukarna yesterday (August 21).
"If any preacher is found to have uttered provocative words or broken the law (by preaching hatred), we will definitely take action against him," he told reporters. "We won't hinder dakwah, the spread of Islamic message, but we will try to be embedded there, be more transparent and do direct monitoring," he said.
But he was quick to add: "We are just stepping up surveillance all over the country because the threat of terrorism remains real and frightening."
Inspector-General Nanan did not say what action the police would take against the clerics. But Indonesian criminal law confers powers on the police to charge anyone who is found to have committed criminal agitation or incitement. Offenders face six years in prison if convicted.
The new stance by the police came hot on the heels of the manhunt for suspects in connection with the twin bombings of the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta that killed nine, including two suicide bombers, and injured more than 50 people on July 17.
The attacks, which ended almost four years of lull in terrorist bombings, raised concerns over the activities of some Islamic preachers who could be fanning extremism among youths through their misguided interpretation of the concept of jihad or war, analysts say.
One of the four wanted men involved in the twin bombings of the Jakarta hotels is a preacher, Syaifudin Zuhri Djaelani Irsyad, who taught at a mosque in Bogor, West Java.
Police believe he recruited Dani Dwi Permana, 18, from among a group of teenagers in his religious class, to be the suicide bomber who struck the JW Marriott. Dani had just completed secondary school.
Police also say that Syaifudin recruited the suicide bomber at the Ritz-Carlton, 28-year-old Ikhwan Maulana, a mosque activist from Banten province, which is near Jakarta.
In the past, police had exercised restraint in clamping down on the activities of clerics, even radical ones, lest they be accused of repressing Muslims as had happened during the authoritarian rule of former president Suharto.
Separately, Inspector-General Nanan yesterday (August 21) declined to comment on a report quoting an analyst as saying that police probes had shown militants planning to use snipers to attack US President Barack Obama's convoy when he visits Indonesia.
"You should ask the analyst how he got such information. Police have not said that," he said. However, he added that police investigators would not ignore any possibility of such an attack on the US President during his planned visit here in November.
Intelligence analyst Dynno Chressbon told Reuters this week that the militants planned to attack the US presidential convoy using MK-IIIs, a type of Russian-made sniper rifle that he said was used by the Taleban in Afghanistan and also in Muslim conflict areas in the Philippines.
Not much is known about Mr Chressbon and his outfit, the Centre for Intelligence and National Security, but he has been widely sought by the local media for quotes on terrorism since the July 17 bombings.