Nivell Rayda – Terrorism experts on Friday urged Indonesia to increase its monitoring of convicted terrorists who had been released from jail.

The experts are concerned that several convicts might be returning to their old ways after police announced on Wednesday that Bagus Budi Santoso, who was jailed in 2005 for hiding fugitive terrorist Noordin M. Top after the first JW Marriott hotel bombing in 2004, is believed to have played a bigger role in the July 17 bombings of the Marriott and the Ritz-Carlton hotels.

"The government should keep a special watch on terror convicts and prevent them from returning to extremism," said Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group. "First, the government must screen out those with the potential to return to extremism. Even in other countries, the correctional facility system can only rehabilitate up to 80 percent of its inmates."

Minister of Justice and Human Rights Andi Mattalata said on Friday that the ministry always alerted the police's Densus 88 antiterror unit whenever a terrorism convict was released.

"Once they are out of the prison system, they are the police's business," the minister said. "We have done everything that we could to rehabilitate them and deter them from terrorism."

However, terrorism expert Noor Huda Ismail said the government needed to do more to keep released convicts from returning to extremism.

"The government is simply sending clerics to talk to them and explain to them that terrorism is not Islam," Ismail said. "If they are talking to someone who believe that they are doing jihad [religious duty], then there's an endless discussion about who is right."

Ismail added that the government needed a softer approach in dealing with convicted terrorists. "The key is compassion and trust," he said. "If the ex-convicts feel accepted then they will open up to new ideas and new perspectives about Islam."

He also suggested that terror convicts should be separated from other inmates to prevent prisons from being used as recruitment centers. Ismail said a prison guard in Porong, East Java, named Asep Jaja was recruited into a terrorist cells.

Asep, who spent months in terrorist training camps here and in the Philippines, was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the 2006 ethnic and religious violence in Maluku.