Energy independence. Now. Here’s one sure instance where poverty didn’t cause terrorism. Islamic supremacist ideologues with too much money to throw around did, and often do. “Indonesia: Terror attacks ‘funded from Middle East’,” from AdnKronos International, August 20:
Jakarta, 20 August (AKI/Jakarta Post) – Funding for a string of terrorist attacks in Indonesia, including last month’s twin hotel bombings in Jakarta, has come from the Middle East, local police have claimed.
Police confirmed in Jakarta on Wednesday they had detained a Saudi Arabian national suspected of trafficking cash funds to fugitive terror suspect Noordin Mohamed Top and Jemaah Islamiyah, the terrorist group believed to be the regional arm of Al-Qaeda.
Malaysian-born Noordin Mohamed Top was a key figure behind the 2002 and 2005 Bali bombings in Indonesia and remains one of Asia’s most wanted fugitives.
Insp. Gen. (ret) Ansyaad Mbai, a senior counter-terrorism official, said the money for key attacks in Indonesia could have originated from personal or charitable sources in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia.
“The problem is that the money was not transferred via banks. This has happened in Indonesia and other countries [in the past] and it makes it difficult to trace the source,” Ansyaad said.
“They [terrorists] understand the government could freeze any money if it was transferred through the banking system. Therefore they use couriers to channel the funds.”
While information on suspected foreign sources of funding is rare, Ansyaad said Indonesian officials had been aware of the involvement of overseas donors from the Middle East since the bomb attacks in Bali in 2002 and those against the Marriott hotel in 2003.
Indonesian police are intensifying their efforts to trace the money used to fund the 17 July attacks on the Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels that killed nine people and wounded more than 50….