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Court ruling justifies further crack down on JAD
End of the road: Zainal Anshori (right), also known as Abu Fahry and Qomaruddin bin M
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nd of the road: Zainal Anshori (right), also known as Abu Fahry and Qomaruddin bin M. Ali, the alleged leader of outlawed terror group Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD), is escorted into a detainee vehicle after a hearing at the South Jakarta District Court on Tuesday. Judges decided to outlaw JAD in Tuesday’s hearing, saying the organization was affiliated with Islamic State (IS) and ordered JAD to pay Rp 5 million (US$346.69) in fines. (JP/Dhoni Setiawan)
A court ruling on Tuesday outlawing Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD), a homegrown terror group affiliated with the Islamic State (IS) group, provides what authorities deemed a strong legal justification for law enforcement to prosecute and arrest people connected with the group.
The South Jakarta District Court found JAD guilty of committing a number of terror acts across the country, declaring it a “forbidden organization” and ordering that all of its activities be frozen.
National Police spokesman Brig. Gen. Muhammad Iqbal said the ruling would help police personnel conduct “repressive actions to prevent” further terror acts.
“This will make police work in enforcing the law against people or groups affiliated with JAD easier,” he said.
The ruling will allow law enforcement to use the recently added Article 12A in the 2018 Terrorism Law, enabling law enforcement to prosecute individuals who intentionally recruit for or join an organization declared a terror group by the court.
Under the revision to the law, enacted in May, violators face a sentence of two to seven years in prison.
“Every person found to be a member or administrator of JAD can be arrested because the court has declared the organization forbidden,” said prosecutor Heri Jerman of the Attorney General’s Office (AGO), who handled the JAD case.
The new law also allows authorities to arrest suspected terrorists based on sufficient preliminary evidence and hold them for 14 days, twice as long as the previous 2003 Terrorism Law.
“Should we find any evidence that an individual is connected with a terror group, we can conduct a preliminary investigation. If we find other evidence in the form of conversation records or others, we can arrest them even before the terror act happens,” Iqbal said.
Concerns have arisen about whether law enforcement will conduct false arrests on, for example, non-JAD members attending religious gatherings organized by JAD members.
“JAD is a jamaah [congregation], not an organization. Any future law enforcement should be done very carefully and based on strong evidence,” said University of Indonesia (UI) terrorism expert Ridwan Habib.
But Iqbal was quick to dismiss the concern, saying “the key is the relationship between the implicated individuals and the terror group”.
The Indonesian Survey Institute’s (LSI) latest survey, released on Tuesday, found that 82 percent of Indonesians, regardless of gender, religion, income, education or political affiliation, are more concerned about terrorism as a result of the Surabaya suicide bombings in May.
The Surabaya bombings shocked the nation as 10 minors were used in a string of bomb attacks. Only three of them survived.
The survey, which interviewed 1,200 respondents above the voting age, also indicates that most Indonesians favor stronger counterterrorism measures and support the new law, which is described by some human rights groups as draconian and prone to abuse. More than 76 percent of respondents approved of longer detention periods for suspected terrorists as stipulated in the new law, according to the survey.
But Solahudin of UI’s Center for Terrorism Studies and Social Conflict said it might not be an effective solution to root out terrorism in the long run.
“The root [cause] of terrorism can’t be solved through a hard approach to law enforcement. It can only be solved through a soft approach, such as counter-radicalization and deradicalization,” he said.
JAD East Java chapter head Zainal Anshori, who represented JAD in the trial, said it would not appeal the ruling, which was made in a rare trial that took only a week to complete.
Court spokesman Achmad Guntur said there was no reason not to speed up the case because “it is a special criminal case”.
The court also ruled that other organizations affiliated with the IS be disbanded, without revealing the names of the groups.
Experts estimate there are at least four groups other than JAD that are affiliated with the IS, including the notorious East Indonesia Mujahidin (MIT), a terrorist network in Poso, Central Sulawesi, which was previously led by Santoso before he was killed in a gun battle with security personnel in 2016. (nor)
