Indonesian Jails Becoming Terror Schools

Jakarta, Indonesia (News Today) - Indonesian police warned on Friday that the country’s prisons were at risk of becoming terrorism schools after a former detainee was arrested for allegedly plotting to attack the Danish embassy. Islamist extremist Abdullah Sunata, 32, considered Indonesia’s most-wanted man, was arrested in Central Java on Wednesday as he allegedly prepared to attack the embassy and a police parade.

He was released in 2009 after serving only a fraction of a seven-year sentence for his role in the 2004 bombing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta, which killed 10 people. An alleged accomplice, identified as Sogir, detained in a separate raid in Central Java on Wednesday, had also spent time in jail for the embassy attack.

A third terror suspect killed in the raids, former soldier Yuli Harsono, 33, became radicalised while serving jail time for smuggling ammunition, police said. National police spokesman Edward Aritonang said Sunata’s case was further evidence that the mainly Muslim country’s prisons risked turning into “schools” for terrorists.

“Abdullah Sunata was a convict. He served time in prison. Inside prison, did he improve himself?” the spokesman told a press conference. It was time to look at a “new system or method, so the counselling for prisoners truly works and prisons don’t become schools” for radicalisation, he said.

Hundreds of terrorists have been convicted, jailed and released since Indonesia was shaken by the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people, mostly Western tourists. With rare exceptions — notably three of the bombers who were executed in 2008 — most have been given lenient sentences and even financial help to find jobs and reintegrate into moderate Indonesian society.

But glaring cases of recidivism such as Sunata’s have forced senior police to admit that the so-called deradicalisation programme has failed.
Counter-terrorism squad chief Colonel Tito Karnavian recently denied that any such programme existed and complained that the government was effectively providing a prison sanctuary for extremists to preach, recruit and plot.

“In prison they can convene, sit and discuss freely, secured by the government,” he told reporters, adding that Indonesia had “no systematic mechanism” for rehabilitation of terrorist detainees.

Source : kompas

Posted in: