Australian secret police target terror suspects

By GREG ANSLEY Australia correspondent

Intelligence agents and police armed with automatic weapons and pistols used sledgehammers to raid homes of Indonesian Muslims in Perth and Sydney in a hunt for associates of the outlawed Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist group.

Officers of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation used federal warrants issued under laws passed on Sunday to make their late night and early morning raids.

They entered homes, interrogated their occupants, and seized documents and computer records.

Attorney-General Daryl Williams yesterday confirmed the raids were part of "wider and ongoing" investigations into Jemaah Islamiyah, a key suspect in the Bali bombings.

The group's leader, cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, is under arrest in Indonesia.

Shortly after 5am yesterday, heavily armed ASIO agents and police forced their way into the homes of two Indonesian families in the Perth suburb of Thornlie.

One of the homes raided was that of father-of-four Sparta Suparta. Police removed computer equipment and documents.

Jan Herbert, whose home was also stormed, said he and his young family were shocked by the dawn raid.

Mr Herbert said heavily armed agents stormed his home about 5am, frightening himself, his wife, elderly mother-in-law and four daughters aged 3, 5, 13 and 14.

The family moved to Perth from Jakarta six years ago.

Mr Herbert said the police asked him about connections to Bashir.

"I met him when he was giving a lecture in Sydney eight or nine years ago, something like that," Mr Herbert said.

A neighbour said the raid was carried out by men dressed in black helmets, black balaclavas, flak jackets and carrying Machine guns, "like it was from a movie".

The raids came as police in Indonesia defused a bomb at a Christian university, Bali bomb investigators issued sketches of blast suspects and the body of one of the New Zealanders killed in the attack was flown to Christchurch from Sydney.

The body of Mark Parker, 27, from Timaru, who was one of three New Zealanders believed to have been killed in the October 12 blast, was identified by Australian police forensic personnel using dental records.

A memorial service for Mr Parker will be held at Timaru's Community Sports Centre today.

The hunt for those behind the bombing stepped up with the release by Indonesian police of sketches of three unnamed men aged 20, 27 and 30, believed to be part of a group of up to 10 suspects.

A spokesman in Jakarta said: "They could be executors or the ones who control the executors. But dominantly, they might be executors."

The subject of the Sydney raid on Sunday, identified only as "Basri", has said he attended lectures by Bashir in Sydney in 1997 and downloaded literature from Bashir's website for inclusion in a newsletter distributed to the city's Indonesian community.

Yesterday ASIO also raided the home of Basri's father and confiscated documents and computer records.

But Basri denied through lawyer Stephen Hopper being associated with any terrorist organisation.

He said he found violence abhorrent, and believed that terrorism damaged Islam.

"He certainly didn't publish anything that promoted violence or suggested any violence against anybody, and particularly against the Australian people," Mr Hopper said.

Muslim community leaders said Basri had no links to the Islamic group apart from having listened to a sermon by Bashir at a mosque in Sydney in 1997.

They said he was a devout Muslim, who distributed pamphlets on Islam.



Mr Williams said: "The operation is directed only at individuals who may have some knowledge of Jemaah Islamiyah in Australia.

"I want to emphasise that it was not directed at the Islamic community."

The ASIO raids follow dramatically heightened security in Australia after the Bali bombing, and came as a leaked Portuguese intelligence report warned of planned attacks by Jemaah Islamiyah on five targets in East Timor, including the Dili branch of the ANZ Bank.

Mr Williams refused to comment on the report, which said a former Indonesian soldier in the West Timor capital of Kupang and a Pakistani national who regularly visited Dili, intended to smuggle explosives across the border between the two Timors.

But East Timor's Foreign Minister, Jose Ramos Horta, said he took the threat seriously because, like Hindu Bali, the Catholic nation stood in the way of Muslim fundamentalists' plan to convert or dominate the region.

Police in Jakarta yesterday swooped on the Indonesian Christian University and defused a bomb. Acting after a tipoff that three bombs had been left on the campus, they said they found a bag containing a round timer on top of another plastic bag.

In Australia, Mr Williams earlier confirmed that Saudi Arabian Hamoud Abaid Al-Anezi, who tried to recruit Melbourne Muslims for the war in Chechnya, had been deported last year.

Al-Anezi has since been identified by the director of the United States House of Representatives taskforce on terrorism, Youssef Bondansky, as a senior al Qaeda operative who was involved in an aborted plan to attack the Sydney Olympics.

In Sydney, New South Wales Premier Bob Carr yesterday announced the formation of a new state counter-intelligence unit, including specialist armed personnel, bomb experts, and forensic analysts.

"Sadly, in the modern world we can no longer ask ourselves 'if'," he said. "With due vigilance we must be prepared for 'when'."

The first ASIO raid in Sydney came within hours of the Government declaring Jamaah Islamiyah a terrorist organisation, allowing agents and police to force entry and carry out a five-hour search and interrogation that ended at 2am. Documents and computer records were confiscated.

Mr Williams said the Government was acting in the interests of the Australian community.

Bali messages and latest information on New Zealanders
New Zealanders who were in Bali, and their families and friends around the world, can exchange news via our Bali Messages page. The page also contains lists of New Zealanders who were in Bali and their condition.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade

* Latest travel advisory for Indonesia

* Bali Bombing Hotline: 0800 432 111

Full coverage: Bali bomb blast

Related links