Senior Commander Petrus Reinhard Golose of the Indonesian police has said that Al-Qaeda provided much of the funding for the string of terrorist bomb attacks in Indonesia since 2002.
Petrus, formerly a senior member of the police anti-terror squad Detachment 88 and the current head of the police internet crimes unit, and who also has the distinction of having had a key role in the killing of Azahari bin Husin last year, was speaking at a two-day international conference on terrorism, which had been opened by President Yudhoyono.
He explained that:
They [Al-Qaeda] sent it through their channels from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed via Thailand and Malaysia before finally reaching Indonesia.
However he would not mention from which countries the money had come from. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the masterminds of the 9/11 attacks on the United States, was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 and handed over to the U.S. and is believed to be al-Qaeda’s third in command.
Petrus said an amount up to $30,000 was first delivered for the 2002 Bali bombings, and that al-Qaeda also later sent tens of thousands of dollars to finance the JW Marriott Jakarta bombing and the Australian Embassy attack.
Unused portions of the money assigned for the JW Marriott hotel bombing in Jakarta were reportedly kept by terror mastermind Azahari bin Husin, who also took possession of a third delivery of an unspecified amount of money from al-Qaeda. Put together the money was then used to finance the second Bali attack, Petrus said, as well as adding:
The funds for the second Bali explosions were also collected from donations and fa’i operations.
Fa’i is Arabic for righteous robbing and thieving. Some possible examples of it we have looked at, 1, 2.
Later again the remaining funds from the second Bali bombings were sent to the southern Philippines, where Jamaah Islamiyah trains its recruits.
This new information comes on top of the claim by National Police chief General Sutanto last month that in February 2002, Malaysian terror fugitive Noordin M. Top received $86,000 from al-Qaeda and in May 2003 $130,000 from people he described as Palestinians.
On another note Petrus said that based on a letter which had been found in a raid on a house in Semarang, central Java, the terrorists led by Noordin M. Top, now grouped under the banner of Tanzim Qaedat Al Jihad, were planning to target foreign individuals in Indonesia, especially Australians, Americans, and citizens of other allied countries, with cafes, hotels and discos being the likely sites of attack.
Apart from Noordin, he said the police were also hunting one Abu Dujana, who is believed to be the new Jamaah Islamiyah leader and was accused of helping hide terror suspects who allegedly planned attacks on U.S. interests in Singapore.
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