21 Indonesia groups state IS support
Adhe Bhakti, a researcher at Centre for Radicalism and De-radicalisation Studies in Jakarta, said there were 21 groups in Indonesia that had stated they supported IS.
But he said these groups were fragmented.
“They are just small local groups like in Central Java or in South Sulawesi. Also, there is no emir or leader to unite them. Most importantly the government is monitoring their movement very closely,” he said.
Indonesian terrorism analyst Noor Huda Ismail said links between Indonesia and the Philippines were nothing new.
“There is a network of Indonesians fighting in Mindanao now,” he said.
In 2012, an Indonesian counter-terrorism squad killed Farhan, a suspected militant who had returned from the south Philippines in 2010.
Farhan was the stepson of convicted terrorist Abu Omar and attended the school radical Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir co-founded.
‘He did not know what ISIS was’
Meanwhile, Bashir will apply for a judicial review of his 15-year jail sentence in a court in Central Java on Tuesday.
Bashir was acquitted over charges relating to the Bali bombings but convicted in 2011 of supporting a terror training camp in Aceh.
He pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State in 2014 while behind bars in a prison on Nusakambangan, the penal island where Australians Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan were executed last year.
But his lawyer, Achmad Michdan, said Bashir no longer supported IS.
“He did in the past because he did not know what ISIS was. Now after he knows what ISIS is he does not support it anymore. He only supports anyone or any organisation that supports the upholding of the Koran and Hadith.” (www.smh.com.au)