Medan, Indonesia – Malaysia has been the goal of a uncommon lethal assault after a person armed with a machete struck a police station in southern Johor state, killing two cops and injuring a 3rd.
Initially, Malaysian police stated they suspected Friday’s incident was linked to the hardline group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) and was most likely an try to steal weapons. Chatting with the media after the assault within the city of Ulu Tiram, Inspector Common of Police Razarudin Husain stated police raided the suspect’s home and found “JI-related paraphernalia”.
5 members of his household have been arrested, together with the suspect’s 62-year-old father, who police stated was a “known JI member”. Two different individuals, who have been within the police station making a report on the time of the assault within the early hours of Friday morning, have been additionally detained.
However on Saturday, Malaysia’s Minister of Dwelling Affairs Saifuddin Nasution Ismail appeared to backtrack on the JI connection, describing the attacker as a “lone wolf” who was “driven by certain motivations based on his own understanding because he rarely mixed with others”.
Former members of JI in Indonesia instructed Al Jazeera that an assault by the group on Malaysian soil appeared unlikely.
Talking from jail in Indonesia’s capital Jakarta, the place he’s serving a life sentence for his function in JI’s 2002 Bali bombing, which killed greater than 200 individuals, Ali Imron instructed Al Jazeera that JI’s profile in Malaysia didn’t appear to suit the police station assault.
“There have never been any JI members in Malaysia who agreed to commit acts of violence like this,” he stated. “Before the Bali bombing, there were attacks in Malaysia, but these were committed not by JI but Kumpulan Mujahidin Malaysia [KMM].”
KMM, a hardline group linked to JI, carried out small-scale assaults in Malaysia within the early 2000s.
Rueben Dass, a senior analyst on the S Rajaratnam Faculty of Worldwide Research in Singapore, famous that JI had by no means beforehand mounted assaults in Malaysia.
“Malaysia was always considered an economic region for JI, not the focus of attacks,” he instructed Al Jazeera. “The Malaysian authorities were always vigilant and aware, particularly after KMM became active. They have been on their toes and carried out a wave of arrests in the early 2000s of JI members.”
Since then, he stated, JI had maintained a low profile.
“To see them coming up again is a little surprising,” he added.
Indonesia, which noticed a spate of JI assaults within the late Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s – together with assaults on church buildings on Christmas Eve 2000, the Bali bombings and the 2003 assault on Jakarta’s JW Marriott Resort – has additionally been largely profitable in clamping down.
In 2003, with funding and coaching from america and Australia, it established the Counterterrorism Particular Detachment 88 (Densus 88), and later arrange a Nationwide Counterterrorism Company (BNPT).
Indonesian authorities have additionally pioneered a vary of deradicalisation programmes, utilizing former members of hardline teams together with JI, with recidivism charges at about 11 p.c, in line with the Institute for Coverage Evaluation of Battle, a Jakarta-based assume tank.
Historical past of JI
JI was based by Indonesian Muslim scholar Abu Bakar Bashir and Abdullah Sungkar in 1993, with a mission to ascertain an Islamic caliphate throughout Southeast Asia.
The group has traditionally been linked to al-Qaeda, from which it reportedly obtained funding and coaching within the Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s. It has had members in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia and the Philippines.
JI was formally banned in Indonesia in 2007, resulting in the group splintering. Some members targeted on dakwah or proselytisation, whereas others continued to plot violent assaults. Arrests have continued throughout the area with members accused of stockpiling weapons and bomb-making gear.
In keeping with open supply information, between 2021 and 2023, out of 610 individuals arrested In Indonesia, 42 p.c have been JI and 39 p.c have been from different hardline teams – together with Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD) and different pro-Islamic State teams.
Nearly all of JI senior figures have been both executed, shot lifeless in police raids or jailed.
Each Bashir and Sungkar lived in Malaysia within the Eighties and Nineteen Nineties, along with senior members corresponding to Indonesian Encep Nurjaman (alias Hambali) and Malaysians Noordin Mohammed Prime and Azahari Husin. Ali Ghufron (alias Mukhlas), Amrozi bin Nurhasyim and Imam Samudra, the masterminds of the Bali bombing, additionally frolicked in Malaysia.
Hambali was arrested in Thailand in 2003 and is presently awaiting trial at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, whereas Samudra, Amrozi and Mukhlas have been executed in 2008. The 2 Malaysians have been shot in separate police raids in Indonesia in 2005 and 2009.
Earlier than his dying, Noordin ran the Luqmanul Hakiem Islamic boarding college in Malaysia, which was based by Bashir and Sungkar and was in Ulu Tiram, near the house of the suspect of Friday’s assault.
Malaysia closed the college in 2002 amid suspicions it was getting used to recruit individuals to JI.
Fashion of assault
Whereas the profile of the suspect’s father, and the proximity to Luqmanul Hakiem, may need instructed a JI connection, Imron cautioned in opposition to such an evaluation.
“If the son followed his father, there is no way he would have committed this act, so there is a strong possibility that he was inspired by ISIS [ISIL],” Imron stated, suggesting the Malaysian authorities had “jumped to that conclusion.”
Umar Patek, who was launched from jail in 2022 after serving 11 years of a 20-year sentence for mixing a few of the chemical compounds used within the Bali Bombing, instructed Al Jazeera that he “did not believe” that the attacker was a member of JI and agreed that the assault appeared to have the hallmarks of one other group.
“I am very doubtful,” he stated. “I don’t understand it, especially carrying out a violent attack. It is impossible in my view that it was JI, but it is possible that it was ISIS.”
The type of the assault has added to the scepticism, because the focusing on of a police station and Muslim cops is inconsistent with JI’s assaults in Indonesia. There, it has been ISIL-inspired hardline teams, together with JAD, which have attacked police stations, seeing them as consultant of the state.
Judith Jacob, the pinnacle of Asia for the chance evaluation and intelligence firm Torchlight, instructed Al Jazeera that probably the most uncommon side of Friday’s assault was the situation.
“While Malaysian militants have been key figures in JI and Philippine-based groups, there are few indications of sophisticated plots targeting Malaysia specifically in recent years,” she stated.
Nevertheless, whereas Malaysia and Indonesia haven’t seen something like the degrees of violence of the early 2000s, assaults haven’t been fully eradicated – with a sample of extra opportunistic and low-level violence rising.
“The attack in Malaysia remains squarely within the wheelhouse of regional Islamist militant groups – that is to say, it is a relatively unsophisticated assault,” Jacob stated.
“Indonesian groups, in particular, have been largely unable to conduct the large-scale attacks or coordinated bombings that were a hallmark of JI in its heyday in the 2000s. Militant groups in the Philippines are more capable, but they too have been unable to conduct sophisticated bombings beyond the southern islands.”
