Devi Asmarani, Jakarta – The Indonesian government should probe reports that a Singaporean extremist helped fund a plot to assassinate President Megawati Sukarnoputri, said lawmakers and Muslim leaders while remaining sceptical of the revelations.
They said that the government should follow up on the information – which emerged from an Al-Qaeda operative being questioned by the United States – if only to prove it was just another "US propaganda against the Muslims".
"It seems to me that all this information is directed at securing the arrest of Abu Bakar Bashir," said a member of the parliamentary panel on defence and security, referring to the international pressure on Indonesia to crack down on the cleric who is the alleged head of the Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional extremist network.
"If the government can find evidence against him then he should be arrested, but we cannot just accept information from foreign intelligence without conducting our own probe," said legislator Yasril Ananta Baharudin.
A report in The Straits Times yesterday quoted terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna as saying that Singaporean Muslim radical Al-Bukhari had played a part in financing an Al-Qaeda plot to assassinate Ms Megawati. These details emerged from confessions made by Al-Qaeda operative Omar al-Faruq who was arrested in Indonesia in June and is now in US custody.
He also revealed that Bashir had been in contact with senior Al-Qaeda leaders and had received money from a Saudi sheikh to buy arms and explosives to be sent to the communal violence-racked Ambon.
Unconvinced, Vice-President Hamzah Haz told reporters yesterday: "If he had received the money, our banking system would have detected it. Whether or not I believe the information depends on the central bank's finding, but I would not worry about it," he added.
Mr Yasril said: "For all we know, al-Faruq could be CIA infiltrator to justify their accusation that the Al-Qaeda network exists here." Nevertheless, the consensus was that the police should investigate the claims because, as Mr Din Syamsuddin secretary-general of the Muhammadiyah Islamic group said, it was hard to believe information based on a 'one-sided confession'.
"The arrest of Omar al-Faruq was mysterious, and what we have gathered so far from it was only based on news reports that were supposed to be leaked by the CIA." Mr Noer Mochamad Iskandar, an MP and an executive member of the country's largest Islamic group, the Nahdlatul Ulama, told The Straits Times: "If there is proof, the police should not be afraid to take action." Doubts were also cast about authenticity of Ms Megawati being an assassination target.
Mr Habib Muhammad Rizieq, chief of the militant Islamic Defenders Front said: "I don't believe that any radical Muslim movement, especially Al-Qaeda, wants to kill Megawati. She has not done anything wrong against the Muslims, and she is too small a target, unlike George Bush. The CIA is the one with ability and technology to kill a president – we suspect that they want to sacrifice Megawati so that the nationalists and the military would fight the Muslim groups." The Muslim leaders also said there was nothing wrong with supplying weapons and explosives to Muslim militants in the conflict areas of Ambon and Poso, saying it was valid self-defence.
Mr Din said: "Conflicts in Maluku and Poso are not terrorism-related." For the first two years, he said, the world did not take note of the Muslim casualties, "so if there are Muslims who want to help their suffering brothers it is just a defence".