10 Mar Indonesia warned of IS danger
A terrorism researcher has warned Indonesia of the potential threat of the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria, saying that Indonesian Mujahideen followers of IS could endanger the country upon their arrival back home.
“They will come back with higher skills, a stronger ideology, more international relations and, likely, higher gun skills,” tribunnews.com quoted Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group (ICG) as saying in a discussion on the dark side of democracy on Thursday.
Jones mentioned several regions where the radical group usually met and recruited new members, with IS networks believed to exist in Jakarta, Solo in Central Java, Bima in West Nusa Tenggara, Lampung and Makassar in South Sulawesi.
She said members of the Indonesian Mujahideen Group joining IS could be more dangerous than the IS organization overseas.
The nation’s largest Muslim organization, Nadlatul Ulama (NU), revealed that more than 500 Indonesians had joined IS in Syria and Iraq.
The government has banned the IS organization in the country and has threatened to criminalize those joining it and to revoke their nationality. (rms)
Published by The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | February 26 2015.