Indonesian Authorities Turn Over Leading Member of JI to Singapore

By Zachary Abuza

Indonesian anti-terror police announced that they deported a leading member of Jemaah Islamiyah, Mas Salamat Kastari, to Singapore, on 3 February, two weeks after re-arresting him in East Java, on 20 January. At the time of his arrest, Kastari was visiting his son at his madrassa using a fake ID card. Kastari, a Singaporean citizen was one of the leaders of JI�s network in the prosperous city-state. He fled Singapore in late-2001. In 2002, he and several other JI members plotted both to bomb Singapore�s Changi Airport and plotted to hijack an Aeroflot jetliner from Bangkok�s Don Muang Airport and crash it into Singapore, in a show of Islamic solidarity with Chechnyan rebels. Kastari has been at the top of Singapore�s most wanted list since then, and it is assumed that they provided key intelligence to Indonesian officials who arrested him in Bintan, an island close to Singapore, in 2003.

Kastari was sentenced to 18 months in prison for nothing more than an immigration violation and was quietly released in late-2005. Why was he re-arrested? "We have arrested him (Kastari) for immigration offences (and) we have deported him because he was on the wanted list in Singapore," national police spokesman Brigadier General Anton Bahrul Alam told reporters. That was not a consideration in 2003.

At the time, the Singaporean government was pressing the Indonesian government for Kastari, but the Indonesian�s insisted that as there was no bilateral extradition treaty, that there was little that they could do. In reality, the Indonesians had long been furious with Singapore�s refusal to turn over several very high-profile Indonesian businessmen who were wanted by government authorities in Jakarta for corruption, the theft of state assets and corporate failings going back to the 1997-99 Asian Economic Crisis.

It is significant that the Indonesian government turned Kastari over to Singapore. But it was too long in the making. His jail term, for nothing more than immigration offenses when he was found with bomb-making manuals in 2003, was absurd. Even more so to release him in 2005 when his leadership in JI and his propensity for mass-casualty attacks was known.

While the Indonesian government was culpable in this, so to was the Singaporean government. As terrorism is a transnational concern, it requires state cooperation, which in turn requires quid pro quos. Is the negative impact of planes crashing into Orchard Road greater than the impact of some laundered illicit gains? Of course. And Singapore�s long-term economic well being is contingent on Indonesia�s economic development, which necessarily entails helping them clean up their corrupt state-owned enterprises and notorious culture of graft, kickbacks and embezzlement.

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