Indonesia Update
By Kenneth Conboy
In a South Jakarta courtroom this week, a Singaporean terror suspect admitted that he was part of a plot to hijack an Aeroflot aircraft from Bangkok and crash it into Singapore’s Changi International Airport.
Mohammad Hasan bin Sayanudin, alias Fajar Taslim, was testifying against two other terrorist suspects. All three are charged with killing a Christian high school teacher in South Sumatra province during 2007. They are also charged with plotting to kill two Catholic priests in 2005 and to carry out a bombing of a café in West Sumatra.
According to Sayanudin, those who were part of the Changi plot were in Bangkok when the plan was exposed in the media. He then fled Thailand and escaped to Indonesia in 2001. He moved around Indonesia before settling in Palembang during 2004. He was arrested along with nine others in mid-2008.
In other news, the Indonesian media reported on 6 March that two Indonesian officials went to Washington in early February and met with representatives of the U.S. State Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation. During these meetings, they requested that the U.S. government continue to detain Indonesian-born terror suspect Hambali after the U.S. closes the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. According to media reports, this is because the officials fear that Hambali will be treated as a celebrity by Indonesian religious hard-liners and could “re-energize his old movement.”
