Bombers fail classes set up to defuse their militancy

Not long ago, Abdullah Sunata was a poster child for Indonesia's efforts to persuade jailed terrorists to give up their violent ways.

He was given furloughs to attend lawn parties and police helped pay for mounting hospital bills when his wife gave birth.

But immediately after his release on good behaviour one year ago, Sunata allegedly returned to his old ways, catapulting to the top of the country's most-wanted list.

He was arrested this week for suspected involvement in a plot to carry out a Mumbai-style attack in the capital, Jakarta, and several high-profile assassinations, including one on President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Sunata's turnaround, experts say, highlights weaknesses in the predominantly Muslim country's deradicalisation programme.

Unlike Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Singapore, efforts here have been largely police-led, focusing on getting prisoners to renounce violence and co-opting informers.

While officers provide financial help to reformed inmates and their families, and sometimes help negotiate early releases, little is done to challenge radical religious tenets, such as the goal of imposing Islamic rule.

"Many of those who are supposedly deradicalised remain committed to those goals," said John Horgan, director of the International Centre for the Study of Terrorism at Pennsylvania State University.

Indonesia, the world's most populace Muslim nation, is a secular democracy.

It was thrust into the front lines of the war on terror in 2002, when al Qaeda-linked nightclub bombings on Bali killed 202 people, many of them foreigners.

There have been several attacks on Western targets since then, but all have been far less deadly - and the most recent was a year ago.

Analysts credit a security crackdown that has netted nearly 600 militants. Of those, around 20 are considered reformed and actively working with police.

There have been several 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 track down and arrest several of his former comrades.

He also enters prisons to hold religious arguments with inmates against some violent forms of jihad.

But many others join the list of disappointments.

Bomb-maker Bagus Budi Pranoto engaged in the deradicalisation programme while serving a four-year sentence for involvement in a 2004 Australian Embassy bombing in Jakarta. Soon after his release, he helped carry out last year's attacks on the J.W. Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels.

Making friends with the enemy always has its risks, and other nations have seen high-profile failures as well.

The Saudi rehabilitation programme - considered a pioneer of deradicalisation - encourages returning detainees to abandon Islamic extremism and reintegrate into civilian life. The well-funded and highly structured programme includes psychological counselling, vocational training and religious re-education.

One Guantanamo detainee who was released in 2007 and sent to Saudi Arabia to benefit from that programme later fled to Yemen and became deputy commander of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

"There's no one country that can guarantee that their deradicalisation programme will work 100 per cent of the time," said Ansyaad Mbai, the top anti-terrorism official at Indonesia's Coordinating Ministry for Security and Political Affairs.

"The most important thing is that there are terrorists who want to co-operate and are aware of their mistakes and ideological confusion. If five out of 10 give up their ways and are integrated back into society, in my mind that's a success."

There is recognition within the Government that changes must be made - especially within prisons, where terrorists easily recruit new members and spread extremist thoughts - but that is not expected to happen quickly.

Sunata came to prominence as a militant in 1999, when he led Kompak, an Islamic group that took part in fighting between Christians and Muslims in the eastern Molucca island chain.

Footage online from that time shows him directing dozens of alleged militants ahead of an assault in a coastal village on Seram island. The camera scans over rows of assault weapons and piles of ammunition, young men waiting to be led.

"We believe that we are on the right side," he tells them before handing them their arms, one by one. "And what we are doing now, God willing, will be good in God's eyes," to which the youths replied: "God willing!"

Sunata was arrested in 2005 for possession of weapons and for hiding Noordin M. Top, the late bomb-making expert who orchestrated all of the major suicide bombings targeting Westerners in Indonesia, including the Bali nightclub blasts.

Behind bars, Sunata was viewed as a shining example of how even hardened criminals could change.

"He was a nice person, cooperative with our rehabilitation programme," said Noor Huda Ismail, executive director of the Inscription Peace Foundation, established in 2008 to help reform terrorism inmates. "But in the end, I admit it, he was a failure."

Sunata's new cell, uncovered in February, was comprised of militants from several groups with ties to the Middle East and the Philippines. Authorities found M-16 assault rifles, revolvers and thousands of rounds of ammunition at their training camp in the western province of Aceh.

They also said they uncovered plans to launch Mumbai-style terror strikes and to kill Yudhoyono and other high-profile targets.

Last month, the police blocked a blog publishing an article allegedly written by Sunata, in which he called on fellow former convicted terrorists to continue to fight and not to follow in the footsteps of people like Abbas, calling him a "helper of evil".

- AP