KARACHI, 24 September 2003 — Four more Indonesian students suspected of having links to a regional terror network have been arrested by Pakistani security agencies in the port city of Karachi, senior officials said yesterday.
The arrests were made overnight and early yesterday, officials said, but refused to give any other details.
Over the weekend, authorities detained 15 Southeast Asian students — two Indonesians and 13 Malaysians — in raids on Islamic seminaries, for suspected links with extremists.
They included Gun Gun Gunawan — a brother of Riduan Isamuddin alias Hambali, a militant accused of masterminding bombings in Southeast Asia and of being Al-Qaeda’s key regional contact, said Tasneem Noorani, secretary of the Interior Ministry. “It is confirmed that he is Hambali’s brother.”
Hambali, who is in the custody of the United States, is accused of masterminding attacks in the region including bombings in Bali last October that killed more than 200 people and a car bombing at a luxury Jakarta Hotel in August that killed 12.
Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, chief of the Interior Ministry’s Crisis Management Cell, said Hambali’s brother was an important link in the suspected terror network.
“They are being interrogated by our security officials,” he said. “They will be deported to their countries in a week to 10 days.”
Intelligence officials said the fresh arrests were made on the basis of information obtained from the 15 suspects during interrogations.
Earlier yesterday, Indonesia’s acting consul general in Karachi, Temu Alam, said his country had asked Pakistan for access to its detained nationals. “We have not yet been given consular access to them,” he said.
Cheema said Pakistan will soon grant the diplomats access. An official of Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency had said the arrests were made at the request of the governments of Indonesia and Malaysia.
In Jakarta, Indonesian foreign affairs spokesman Marty Natalegawa told Reuters that Pakistan had notified Indonesia that two Indonesians had been arrested on separate occasions this month. “We also would like to express concern that up until now we have not received any official statement from the Pakistani authorities allowing us access to both students,” said the spokesman.
