Once bitten, twice shy? Not this guy!

Embassy bomb-maker rearrested.



An Indonesian terrorist who helped assemble the bomb used in the 2004 attack on Australia's Jakarta embassy has been rearrested just months after his release from prison.

Heri Sigu Samboja, better known as Sogir, was one of three men arrested in a series of police raids in Central Java this week.

Police also arrested Abdullah Sunata, Indonesia's most wanted man and a key recruiter for a terrorist group uncovered in Aceh earlier this year. They also arrested another suspect and shot dead a fourth.

Samboja, 28, is a graduate of a Jemaah Islamiah religious school who had bomb-making training under terrorist masterminds Noordin Mohammad Top and Azhari Husin in 2004.

Later that year he helped assemble the massive car bomb that exploded outside Australia's Jakarta embassy, killing 10. He was arrested weeks later and was sentenced to seven years' jail in 2005.

Authorities believe he sparked a friendship with Sunata in prison before he was released earlier this year.

Sunata, 31, took up the jihadi cause in 1999 and quickly rose to become a leader of militant group KOMPAK.

It's believed he helped Dulmatin and fellow Bali bomber Umar Patek escape to the Philippines in the wake of the 2002 attacks that killed 202 people.

Top later approached him to take part in the Australian embassy bombing but he declined.

He was arrested in 2005 and sentenced to seven years' prison for sheltering Top but was released for good behaviour after serving less than three years.

He immediately returned to his old ways, joining with Bali bombing mastermind Dulmatin to set up the Aceh group, an amalgam of several militant organisations.

Authorities believe the group had been plotting to assassinate President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and stage Mumbai-style gun attacks on luxury hotels in Jakarta.

Police have arrested more than 60 people and killed more than a dozen believed to be involved with the group since February.

The ICG's Sidney Jones, one of the top experts on South-East Asian terrorism, said Sunata's arrest was significant.

"It's an important catch and he was a known recruiter," Dr Jones told AAP.

"The problem is going to be that he recruited people while he was in prison so this time around they're going to have to keep a very, very strict eye on him."

Top and Dulmatin were both killed in police raids in the past year. Azhari was killed in a 2005 raid. Umar Patek remains at large.


(Yeah-yeah, you'd be surprised to know what a good handfull uang mas can do!)

Terrorist ‘Rehab’ a Failure: Minister

The government’s deradicalization program aimed at getting convicted terrorists to renounce violence has been declared a failure in the wake of this week’s arrest of suspect Abdullah Sonata, who was released from prison in 2009 on good behavior.

“We have to say that generally the program has failed,” Minister of Justice and Human Rights Patrialis Akbar said on Friday. “There are convicts who have successfully been re-integrated back into society, leaving behind their old ways. But successes are few compared to those who remain unreformed.”

“It is extremely difficult to reform terrorists because we are trying to destroy years of indoctrination and misinterpretation of Islam,” he said. “We will solicit help from psychologists, experts, criminologists and clerics to determine the best means to reform hard-core terrorists.”

Sonata, 32, was arrested on Wednesday for his suspected involvement in a plot to carry out Mumbai-style attacks in Jakarta that police said targeted several high-profile figures, including President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Police also worry that the prisons themselves may act as breeding grounds for terrorism. A suspect killed in this week’s raids, former soldier Yuli Harsono, 33, became radicalized while serving jail time for smuggling ammunition, police said.

“Abdullah Sonata was a convict. He served time. Inside prison, did he improve himself?” National police spokesman Edward Aritonang told reporters.

It is time to find a “new system or method, so the counseling for prisoners truly works and prisons don’t become schools for radicalization,” Edward said.

Local terror deprogramming efforts have been led largely by police, unlike similar programs in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Singapore. The main thrust behind the police efforts is getting prisoners to give up violence and co-opting them as informers. While officers provide financial help to reformed inmates and their families, little is done to challenge their radical religious beliefs, such as the goal of imposing Islamic rule.

Since the 2002 Bali bombings, analysts credit a security crackdown that has netted nearly 600 militants for keeping terrorism in check. Of those, only 20 are considered reformed and actively working with police.

There have been some success stories, most famously Nasir Abbas, a former Al Qaeda-linked militant who helped train the Bali bombers. After his 2004 release from prison, he became instrumental in helping hunt and arrest several of his former comrades.

But the list of disappointments is long. Bomb-maker Bagus Budi Pranoto was in the deradicalization program while serving a four-year sentence for his role in the 2004 Australian Embassy bombing in Jakarta. He helped carry out last year’s attacks on the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in the capital.

Sonata was arrested in 2005 for possession of weapons and for hiding Noordin M Top, the slain terrorism mastermind.

Behind bars, Sonata was viewed as a shining example of how criminals can change. “He was a nice person, cooperative with our rehabilitation program,” said Noor Huda Ismail, executive director of the Inscription Peace Foundation, established in 2008 to turn terrorism inmates around. “But in the end, he was a failure.”