posted May 27, 2005 10:24 PM            

Published: May 28, 2005
JAKARTA, Indonesia, May 27 - A drug smuggling case that has captivated and outraged Australia came to a climax on Friday when a 27-year-old Australian woman was given a 20-year prison term for trying to bring nine pounds of marijuana into Bali hidden in her bodyboard bag.

The verdict, read in a packed courtroom in Bali, was carried live on Australian television and radio. The three judges who heard the case could have sentenced the defendant, Schapelle Corby, to death, a fate met by many foreigners convicted of drug offenses in Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries.

Ms. Corby had steadfastly maintained her innocence, claiming the plastic, vacuum-sealed bag with the marijuana, which customs officials found in her luggage when she landed in Denpasar in October, had been put there by baggage handlers during her flight, which began in Brisbane and transited through Sydney.

In many ways there was nothing remarkable about this case. Southeast Asian countries have tough drug laws, and travelers are strongly warned about the consequences of being caught with drugs.

But Ms. Corby, young, female and attractive, is not like most defendants. Her supporters included the Australian government, which paid for part of her defense, raising eyebrows and charges that Australia was interfering in the Indonesian judicial system in a way that Australians would never tolerate another country's doing in Australia.

A 28-year-old Brisbane businessman, Ron Bakir, said he was paying the bulk of her defense costs. But he added to the intrigue when it was reported that a mobile phone company he had founded, Mad Ron's, had gone bankrupt - he said he sold the company before the bankruptcy - and that he had a deal with Ms. Corby to split any proceeds from a book. He denied the accusation.

The actor Russell Crowe, an Australian, also weighed in for Ms. Corby. "How can we, as a country, stand by and let a young lady, as an Australian, rot away in a foreign prison?" he said on a radio talk show.

"We gave Indonesia how many hundreds of millions of dollars in tsunami relief?" Mr. Crowe asked.

Responding to public pressure, the government of Prime Minister John Howard sent a letter to the Indonesian court saying Australia was investigating corrupt baggage handlers, which seemed to support Ms. Corby's defense. The opposition leader, Kim Beazley, also suggested Ms. Corby was not guilty.

Mr. Howard and Mr. Beazley "are pandering to Australian public opinion," The Sydney Morning Herald said in an editorial.

Based on the evidence presented, a Melbourne law professor, Tim Lindsey, said he thought the judges had reached the right decision.

"The evidence we've seen isn't particularly strong in favor of her innocence," he told Channel 9.

Both sides said they would appeal. The prosecution can seek an increase in the length of the sentence.

Australia's foreign minister, Alexander Downer, said the government would send lawyers to help Ms. Corby with her appeal. He also said the government was discussing a prisoner exchange with Indonesia.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/28/international/asia/28indo.html

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Website, threats tied to U.S. Indonesia closures
27 May 2005 09:16:10 GMT

Source: Reuters

By Jerry Norton

JAKARTA, May 27 (Reuters) - Website tips on the best ways to attack the United States embassy and movements by suspected members of violent Islamic groups were factors in the closure of U.S. diplomatic facilities in Indonesia, experts said on Friday.

When the closures were announced on Thursday, an embassy statement referred to terrorist threats without offering details. An embassy spokesman has declined to elaborate, but the facilities will be closed until further notice.

A New York Times report attributed the closings to the appearance on a militant website of a diagram of the embassy, showing the location of the ambassador's office and other sites, and advising, in the Indonesian language, on the most effective means to attack the sprawling low-rise complex.

The website posting "obviously caused the embassy enough concern to justify them closing," a Western security expert based in Indonesia told Reuters.

Jakarta police spokesman Tjiptono said the closure "was because we had received information on the movement of Azahari (bin Husin) and Noordin M. Top ... and the movement of their men in the capital".

Police say Azahari and Top, both Malaysians, are among the masterminds behind a spate of bombings in Indonesia and are key members of Jemaah Islamiah, a group seen as the regional arm of al Qaeda.

Attacks against Western targets in Indonesia blamed on Jemaah Islamiah include blasts at Bali nightclubs in October 2002 that killed 202 people, mostly foreigners, and one last September outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta that killed 10.

Note: The masterminds that have organised this only got 2 1/2 years each for these heinous murders! Just wanted you guys to know that, mind you!

National police chief Da'i Bachtiar linked the Jemaah Islamiah fugitives with the embassy diagram.

"Our investigation on the Azahari group ... prompts an analysis that there has been communication among this group as a preparation to conduct another attack. From that analysis, there is information or a picture that refers to a map of the U.S. embassy in Jakarta. Probably, this is what the U.S. authorities thought as a plan to attack the embassy," he told reporters.

But he also suggested the development could be a diversion.

"This can be a trick. Why attack a target so openly like that and create concern?"

A second Western security expert suggested the U.S. facility closures, which included consulates in Bali and Surabaya and an office in Medan, reflected several factors.

"It looks like there's sort of a whole string of things ... converging at the same time," said Ken Conboy, country manager at Risk Management Advisory in Indonesia.

Aside from the Jemaah Islamiah movements and diagram, which he considered "rather amateurish", he cited the recent Newsweek magazine article alleging U.S. military abuse of the Koran.

The article, subsequently retracted, "did generate an awful lot of tension. It got people out in the streets."

A visit to Washington this week by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and reports Indonesians trained in violent tactics by Muslim militants in the Philippines had returned were other concerns, Conboy said.

In addition, he added "there's the fact that Jemaah Islamiah averages about a strike a year, and it's been about eight months since the last one, so that's more than enough time for them to plan another."

The other Western security expert expressed similar sentiments, saying it is likely "a matter of when rather than if" another attack will come.

(With additional reporting by Telly Nathalia)

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/JAK85228.htm

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So let's get this all straight folks, getting people stoned in Indonesia is wrong, but killing masses amounts of people(including Americans) by terrorism is OK! And then we call them friends!

Some friends! Go figure!

Word of advice to all citizens of the western countries: STOP GOING TO MUSLIM RAN COUNTRIES, THEY DO NOT LIKE YOU!

Happy Friday!

posted May 29, 2005 12:43 PM            

JAKARTA, Indonesia (May 28) - Two bombs exploded Saturday at a busy market in central Indonesia, killing at least 22 people and wounding 40 others, but the government said the attacks were not related to years of sectarian violence in the area.

The blasts occurred in the morning at a market in Sulawesi island's Christian-dominated town of Tentena, said Police Maj. Riky Naldo, the deputy chief of police in nearby Poso town. More than 90 percent of Indonesia's 210 million people are Muslims.

Two policemen were among the wounded, Naldo said.

"The latest report says 22 people were killed," Vice President Jusuf Kalla told a news conference in Makassar, the provincial capital of South Sulawesi.

Kalla said he believed the explosion was carried out by terrorists - but that the attacks were not linked to long-running sectarian violence in the area.

"It was carried out by the terrorists instead of warring Muslim and Christian factions," he said. "The motive of the perpetrators is to disturb the security situation in Poso."

Tentena is about 60 kilometers (35 miles) from Poso, where fighting between Muslims and Christians claimed at least 1,000 lives in 2000-2002.

Those clashes were an offshoot of a larger Muslim-Christian conflict in the nearby Maluku archipelago, fomented by Laskar Jihad, a militia from Indonesia's main island of Java. The gang was reportedly supported by hardline army elements trying to destabilize the reformist administrations that took office after the fall of longtime military dictator Gen. Suharto.

Large-scale clashes have since died down, but over the past year the island has seen an increase in bombings and attacks on individuals.

Kalla described Saturday's bombers as "terrorists from outside" Sulawesi, but declined to say precisely who they were.

"Maybe this group also will make trouble in other places. The problem of terrorism is the problem of the world," he said.

In January, police found 60 homemade bombs in an abandoned house in Poso.

"We still have no idea on the motive of the explosions, but clearly these bombs were aimed at disturbing the security situation in this region," said Brig. Gen. Aryanto Sutadi, chief of the Central Sulawesi Police.

No one has been arrested over the explosions.

Witnesses said a small explosion was followed about 15 minutes later by a much larger one. The bigger blast flattened the market that sold fruit, vegetables and meat, and was near a police station.

Police later discovered an unexploded bomb outside a nearby church, said Poso district chief Andi Asikin Suyuti. He said a Christian clergyman and a three-year boy were among the dead.

Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation, but central Sulawesi has roughly equal Muslim and Christian populations.

Saturday's blasts came just two days after warnings of unspecified attacks prompted the United States to close its embassy and other diplomatic offices in Indonesia until further notice.

Police said they did not know of any specific threats against Americans, but that they have intelligence indicating that Malaysian terror suspects Azahari bin Husin and Noordin Mohamed Top might be planning more attacks. Their targets are typically Western-related.

National police spokesman Maj. Gen. Anang Budihardjo, said he could not rule out the possibility that Azahari had played a role in the latest Poso bombing.

"I cannot say (the bombs) were the work of Azahari's group, but because he has been a fugitive for long, it is possible that he has recruited new members in the region," the spokesman said Saturday.

The two Malaysians are believed to have masterminded the attacks on the Sept. 9, 2004 attack at the Australian Embassy that killed 10 people and the Aug. 5, 2003 Marriott hotel bombing that killed 12. Both blasts were in Jakarta.

05/28/05 06:56 EDT

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