Medan, Indonesia – Malaysia was the target of a rare deadly attack after a man armed with a machete attacked a police station in the southern state of Johor, killing two police officers and injuring a third.
Initially, Malaysian police said they suspected Friday’s incident was linked to the hardline Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) group and was likely an attempted weapons theft. Speaking to the media after the attack in the city of Ulu Tiram, Inspector General of Police Razarudin Husain said police raided the suspect’s home and discovered “JI-related paraphernalia”.
Five members of his family were arrested, including the suspect’s 62-year-old father, who police said was a “known JI member.” Two other people, who were at the police station making a police report at the time of the attack, in the early hours of Friday, were also arrested.
But on Saturday, Malaysia’s Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail appeared to backtrack on the JI call, describing the attacker as a “lone wolf” who was “driven by certain motivations based on his own understanding because he rarely mixed with other people.” .
Former JI members in Indonesia told Al Jazeera that an attack by the group on Malaysian soil seemed unlikely.
Speaking from prison in Indonesia’s capital Jakarta, where he is serving a life sentence for his role in JI’s 2002 Bali bombing that killed more than 200 people, Ali Imron told Al Jazeera that JI’s profile in Malaysia was not seemed to fit the attack on the police station. .
“There has never been any JI member in Malaysia who agreed to commit acts of violence like this,” he said. “Before the Bali bombing, there were attacks in Malaysia, but these were committed not by JI, but by Kumpulan Mujahidin Malaysia [KMM].”
The KMM, a hardline group linked to the JI, carried out small-scale attacks in Malaysia in the early 2000s.
Rueben Dass, a senior analyst at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, noted that JI had never organized attacks in Malaysia.
“Malaysia has always been considered an economic region for JI, rather than a focus for attacks,” he told Al Jazeera. “The Malaysian authorities have always been vigilant and aware, especially after the KMM became active. They were vigilant and carried out a wave of arrests in the early 2000s of JI members.”
Since then, he said, JI has kept a low profile.
“Seeing them popping up again is a little surprising,” he added.
Indonesia, which saw a series of JI attacks in the late 1990s and early 2000s – including attacks on churches on Christmas Eve 2000, the Bali bombings and the 2003 attack on the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta – also had great success in repression.
In 2003, with funding and training from the United States and Australia, it created the Special Counterterrorism Detachment 88 (Densus 88) and, later, created a National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT).
Indonesian authorities have also pioneered a series of deradicalization programs using former members of hard-line groups, including JI, with recidivism rates of about 11 percent, according to the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, a group think tank based in Jakarta.
History of JI
JI was founded by Indonesian Muslim scholars Abu Bakar Bashir and Abdullah Sungkar in 1993, with the mission of establishing an Islamic caliphate across Southeast Asia.
The group has historically been linked to Al-Qaeda, from which it reportedly received funding and training in the 1990s and early 2000s. It had members in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia and the Philippines.
JI was officially banned in Indonesia in 2007, leading to the group’s split. Some members focused on dakwah or proselytizing, while others continued to plan violent attacks. Arrests continued across the region, with members accused of storing weapons and bomb-making equipment.
According to open source data, between 2021 and 2023, of the 610 people detained in Indonesia, 42 percent were JI and 39 percent were from other hardline groups – including Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD) and other pro-state groups Islamic.
Most of JI’s senior officials were executed, shot dead in police operations or imprisoned.
Both Bashir and Sungkar lived in Malaysia in the 1980s and 1990s, in addition to senior members such as Indonesian Encep Nurjaman (also known as Hambali) and Malaysians Noordin Mohammed Top and Azahari Husin. Ali Ghufron (also known as Mukhlas), Amrozi bin Nurhasyim and Imam Samudra, the masterminds of the Bali bombing, also spent time in Malaysia.
Hambali was arrested in Thailand in 2003 and is currently awaiting trial in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, while Samudra, Amrozi and Mukhlas were executed in 2008. The two Malaysians were shot in separate police operations in Indonesia in 2005 and 2009.
Before his death, Noordin ran the Luqmanul Hakiem Islamic boarding school in Malaysia, founded by Bashir and Sungkar and located in Ulu Tiram, close to the home of Friday’s attack suspect.
Malaysia closed the school in 2002 amid suspicions that it was being used to recruit people into JI.
Attack style
While the suspect’s father’s profile and closeness to Luqmanul Hakiem may have suggested a JI link, Imron cautioned against such an analysis.
“If the son followed his father, he would not have been able to commit this act, so there is a strong possibility that he was inspired by ISIS [ISIL],” Imron said, suggesting that Malaysian authorities “have reached this conclusion.”
Umar Patek, who was released from prison in 2022 after serving 11 years of a 20-year sentence for mixing some of the chemicals used in the Bali bombing, told Al Jazeera that he “did not believe” the attacker was a member of JI. and agreed that the attack appeared to have the characteristics of another group.
“I have a lot of doubts,” he said. “I don’t understand, especially carrying out a violent attack. In my opinion, it is impossible that it was JI, but it is possible that it was ISIS.”
The style of the attack has increased skepticism, as the attack on a police station and Muslim police officers is inconsistent with JI attacks in Indonesia. There, ISIL-inspired hard-line groups, including JAD, attacked police stations, seeing them as representing the state.
Judith Jacob, head of Asia at risk analysis and intelligence firm Torchlight, told Al Jazeera that the most unusual aspect of Friday’s attack was the location.
“Although Malaysian militants have been key figures in JI and Philippines-based groups, there is little evidence of sophisticated plots specifically targeting Malaysia in recent years,” she said.
However, although Malaysia and Indonesia have not experienced similar levels of violence as in the early 2000s, attacks have not been completely eradicated – a more opportunistic, low-level pattern of violence has emerged.
“The attack in Malaysia remains squarely within the purview of regional Islamic militant groups – in other words, it is a relatively unsophisticated attack,” Jacob said.
“Indonesian groups, in particular, have largely been 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 nor have they been able to carry out sophisticated bombing beyond the southern islands.”
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
