SYDNEY, 31 October — Heavily armed Australian federal agents raided homes of Indonesian Muslims yesterday in a nationwide hunt for members of an Islamic radical group held responsible for the Oct. 12 bombing in Bali.
Police and intelligence agents armed with submachine guns and wearing helmets, flak-jackets and masks smashed their way into two homes in pre-dawn raids in the Perth suburb of Thornlie in Western Australia.
At the same time agents in Sydney arrested a 31-year-old man on visa offenses during the search of a home belonging to another Indonesian, Ali Basri, whose son Jaya was targeted by a similar raid on Sunday. Officials also confirmed two other homes were raided at the weekend by members of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization and federal police in a hunt for agents of the Indonesian group Jemaah Islamiah.
Attorney General Daryl Williams said the operations were "part of a wider and ongoing investigation into the possible presence of Jemaah Islamiah in Australia".
But neighbors of the targeted homes, civil libertarians and Muslim community leaders questioned the level of force used in the raids. "The federal police hit the fence in the front, hit the security door and...broke the door in the side to go through to the back yard as well," said Jan Herbert, whose home was one of the two raided in Perth.
Muslim community leaders said Basri had no links to the Islamic group apart from the fact that he had listened to a sermon by its suspected leader, Abu Bakar Bashir, at a mosque in Sydney in 1997.
