News of funding of terrorism activities.

In something of a follow-up to the jihad recruiter arrested story the police have revealed that some of the men arrested have confessed to being involved in robberies, like this one, probably carried out to raise funds for militant activities.

We are looking into whether the robbery was committed to fund terrorist activities

Said police General Dodi Sumantyawan. He also said that Subur Sugiarto, one of the detained men, had confessed that he had been involved in several armed robberies in the city of Solo, central Java, in 2001.

Separately Brigadier General Anton Bachrul Alam said:

According to the investigation results of the first Bali bombing, the perpetrators, Imam Samudra and his team members, robbed banks and jewelry stores to raise funds for the attack.

Documents discovered at the east Java hideout of killed terrorist Azahari bin Husin also suggested involvement of the terrorists in robberies.

The police had previously several times commented on the string of bank and jewelry store heists that have occurred in Jakarta and Yogyakarta recently noting the unusually high level, by local standards, of calculation and violence that was employed by the thiefs.

It is of course interesting that the men involved seem to have to resort to what on balance are wild and desperate attempts to gain funds with so much risk of capture or death, (the money changer I used to take my business to had two armed-to-the-teeth policemen in its employ on the premises, your average Chinese businessman is a safety-conscious fellow) and that they seem unable to garner local or foreign “benefactors” for their heroic efforts at inflicting death and misery on as many people as possible in the cause of the religion of peace. They also, if these stories of widespread robberies by them are borne out to be true, show obvious signs of developing into a criminal underworld type organisation.