ABC Foreign Correspondent - Terror - Go - Round (2010)

Information
Terror-Go-Round
Broadcast: 24/08/2010
Reporter: Matt Brown


In a prison within a prison in central Java, some of Indonesia’s most dedicated and destructive terrorists are doing time for deadly crime.

There’s Abdul Ghoni who mixed the explosive cocktail that rocked Bali’s Kuta nightclub district in 2002 killing hundreds. Nearby, Anif Sochannudin wanders the prison courtyard. He volunteered to carry an explosive back-pack into a beachfront restaurant in Bali’s Jimabaran in the second wave of attacks in Bali. Someone else got the job and he got a prison term for his part in organising a bombing that killed 20. Abdul Aziz paces his cell anxiously awaiting parole and an end to his term for protecting terror king-pin, the late Noordin Mohammed Top.

They’re vehement Jihadis who have shown they’re prepared to take extreme action on behalf of Islam. Can they change? Well, many are changing for the worse.

Indonesia is discovering that many of its violent terrorist convicts are emerging from their prison punishment with a renewed zeal for jihad and are heading straight back into the terrorist fold.

“If I was still outside now it’s possible I would join the network again. Hate against the police has grown deep in my heart.” ANIF SOLCHANNUDIN – Terrorist

Indonesia Correspondent Matt Brown secured rare access to Java’s Kedungpane prison to examine why terrorism and recidivism are rusted together and what if anything Indonesian authorities are able to do about it. Worryingly - right now – that’s not much.

“What the police are doing today is just cutting the tip of the iceberg. We need to find out why this guy is going back to the network, there must be a problem. There must be a weakness.” Cdr. TITO KARNAVIAN - Counter terrorism Unit, Indonesia

With the sensational re-arrest of Jemaah Islamiyah father figure Abu Bakar Bashir and recidivists emerging in Aceh and from behind the smoking ruins of the Marriot in Jakarta, Brown discerns too little is being done by too few to address the problem.

“I think it’s extremely important for us to have de-radicalisation program, inside the prison and after because these people are driven by ideology. You can’t kill ideology by simply locking them in jail.” NOOR HUDA ISMAEL – Reform activist and author