Dicky Christanto, Jakarta – Terrorist cells across the country are still actively recruiting members and planning future attacks, the elite counterterrorism squad said Monday, despite the deaths earlier this year of several top fugitives.

"The death of [most-wanted terrorist] Noordin [M. Top] hasn't stopped these terrorists," said Detachment 88 head Brig. Gen. Tito Karnavian. "Our investigations show his remaining cells are still active today."

Police shot Noordin dead in a raid in Surakarta, Central Java, in September. Noordin was the prime suspect behind the July 17 bombings of the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Kuningan, South Jakarta, in which five people were killed and 55 injured.

He was also widely believed to be responsible for the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people, most of them foreign tourists.

Tito also said the possibility of horizontal conflicts in several hot spots across the country could serve as the ideal foundation for the cells to recruit new acolytes and launch terrorist attacks.

He cited Poso in Central Sulawesi and Ambon in Maluku as examples of such trouble spots. "We must be extra careful, as even a small-scale horizontal conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims could easily degenerate into terror activities," Tito said.

He added the police had also managed to trace the funding for terrorist activities back to foreign donors.

"That's why we need to enforce the use of a soft approach toward members of these active cells," he said. "We must be able to fight their radical ideology."

Tito said the police were currently attempting to de-radicalize as many people as possible involved in various terrorist activities, adding de-radicalization programs were the force's main hope for dismantling radical ideology.

Psychotherapist Mardigu W. Prasantyo, involved in the police's de-radicalization program, said it could take him hours to start convincing jailed terrorists to cooperate with the police.

"I have to be become their friend in the discussion in order to get their attention," he said. "At the end of the day, I have to be able to convince them that it is not Indonesia and its people that they should be fighting against."

The police claim to have 113 former terror activists now on their payroll.

According to Sr. Comr. Petrus Reinhard Gollose, a senior police officer who had conducted a study on de-radicalization, most of these people had finally decided to cooperate with the police after being made to see that their previous activities had not been the least bit beneficial to them.

"Some of them admitted it was their financial straits that led them to join terrorist cells," he said.