From behind secure prison walls, convicted terrorist Abdul Aziz seems harmless, if not playful. The 34-year-old inmate is one of five convicted terrorists now serving time at Kedung Pane prison for their role in plotting the 2005 Bali bombing, which killed 23 people and injured over 120 others. At the time, their convictions were seen as a significant step in Indonesia's internationally lauded counter-terrorism campaign. But Aziz and others could soon be up for parole, and there are questions as to how harmless they would be back on Indonesia's streets.
Aziz said in an interview with Asia Times Online that he has personally re-evaluated the means for achieving jihad, the struggle required of practicing Muslims to preserve Islam. However, he admits to "feeling more anger" towards the state since officials denied him a parole opportunity earlier this year.
Aziz recently participated in a five-day conflict-management program piloted by a partnership of non-governmental organizations that aims to disengage terrorists from the ideological thinking that promotes the use of violence. The program, headed by Search for Common Ground (SCG), a conflict transformation organization that receives the bulk of its funding from European governments, attempts to fill a hole in Indonesia's prison system.
Until now, de-radicalization programs in Indonesia's prisons have been mainly personal initiatives led by police who work to befriend radical inmates or win them over through money donations made to their families. The SCG group of trainers leading the program, which they say emphasizes "disengagement" rather than "de-radicalization" , hopes to introduce new ways of thinking to convicted terrorists.
While Aziz has openly soul-searched about his jihadi past, it's not clear that others under rehabilitation buy into SCG's message. The program's trainers say they realize its shortcomings: participation is voluntary, but at Semarang guards goaded the inmates into attending. Rehabilitation, however, is an important back story to Indonesia's ongoing counter-terrorism campaign.
"As long as [de-radicalization] activities are running, by a group or even by random personal initiative, people need those activities," said Nasir Abas, a former terrorist now advising police and universities on de-radicalization measures. He said radical ideology was at the root of Indonesia's terrorism problem and that efforts to counter such thinking are key to rehabilitating terrorists.
The government has rounded up scores of suspects since the bombing attacks on two Jakarta-based luxury hotels last year, but is now confronted with how to rehabilitate detainees, including those who will eventually be paroled. The state has argued that all terrorists require reform, even those who have received life sentences, otherwise they may continue spreading radical ideas from jail.
Some may simply be beyond reform. Abdullah Sunata, who was arrested in late June for allegedly plotting to attack the Danish Embassy and a police parade scheduled for early July, was offered various monetary incentives to cooperate with police. He had returned to terrorist activities after serving a few years in jail, though he didn't participate in a formal de-radicalization program during his previous imprisonment.
Some security analysts say harsher sentences are needed. But when the men accused of masterminding the 2002 Bali bombing that killed over 200 people were executed, their arguments were met with rebuttals that state-conducted killings could set off new waves of terrorism and violence. Now, as the prison population of terror suspects bulges, the state has grudgingly acknowledged that lower-ranking former operatives require reform as much as punishment.
Detachment 88, the country's US- and Australia-trained counter-terrorism unit, has said that the government needs to focus more attention on places where radical ideologies are spread, such as schools, prisons and publishing houses. However, the police-led unit has come under growing criticism from rights groups who believe in some instances police have used excessive and unnecessary force in their operations to nab terror suspects.
Sitting back in a metal prison chair and tugging at his long wispy beard, Aziz strikes a pose of absolute calm. This despite the eight-year prison sentence he was given in September 2006 for harboring Noordin Mohammad Top, the mastermind behind a series of bombings across the country that included the 2005 Bali blast. Noordin was the most-wanted terror suspect in Southeast Asia when he was killed by police in a firefight last October.
Aziz is a relative peon compared to cellmates like Abdul Ghoni, a mujahideen-trained Afghan veteran who was convicted for constructing the bomb used in the 2005 Bali attack. Though he does not believe that his sentence is unfair, Aziz does not accept responsibility for the attack's deaths and injuries.
His role was to design a website, anshar.net, for the radical group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), which has been accused of orchestrating both Bali bombings. Aziz acknowledges that he took his orders from the organization' s leaders, but was not privy to the plans to target the Bali nightclub.
The website contained general information about jihad, but also included advice on how and where to carry out terror attacks and served as a recruitment tool for funds and supporters. Aziz, who rented a house for Noordin in his hometown in central Java in mid-2005, said that after the Bali bombing he was ordered to send a video to global television news station al-Jazeera warning that more attacks were imminent.
Devout roots
Aziz was born to a family of devout Muslims who taught him to read the Koran at an early age. As a teenager he studied different Islamic organizations, including the pan-Islamic political grouping Hizb ut-Tahrir and Indonesia's second-largest mass Muslim organization, Muhamadiyah.
He voluntarily joined JI because it taught its members to fight against the enemies of Islam and at the time he believed that was the way to become a good Muslim. However, his devotion wavered over the violent actions JI took in the name of jihad.
In 1997, he stepped back to teach computer classes to high school students, but returned to JI's fold after an acquaintance asked him during an Islamic teaching forum if he would help design a website to spread jihadi propaganda.
Aziz is frank when talking about his time with JI. He says that he was not brainwashed and still believes that taking up weapons is important in the fight against those who prevent Muslims from practicing or spreading their religion. What he disagrees with are terror tactics that target hotels and other public spaces, he said.
Since being imprisoned in November 2005, Aziz has had his sentence reduced four times for good behavior. Indonesian law allows the government to shorten the sentences of inmates who have served at least one-third of their term during Independence day celebrations on August 17 and during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Aziz was eligible to go before a parole board in February, but police officials from Detachment 88 requested that his review be postponed. Aziz, who received no explanation for the postponement, believes that he is the victim of a campaign aimed at burnishing the police's image.
Of the 73 terror suspects police have arrested or killed in the past four months, 15 had already served time in jail for criminal activity. That recidivism has sparked criticism, including from the country's justice and Human Rights Minister, Patrialis Akbar, who suggested that prison-run de-radicalization programs had failed.
Others say the root of the problem lies with the correctional system. Indonesia's prisons suffer from severe overcrowding, endemic corruption, and bribery between guards who seldom have received ethics training. US rights lobby Human Rights Watch and Indonesian legal aid groups have issued reports detailing the widespread abuse of prisoners by guards.
Aziz believes that the number of people who return to their radical networks is small, but that those who do have often been traumatized while under detention. He is convinced that the Sunata-led plan to attack the July 1 police parade was in retaliation for the use of force in ongoing terrorism raids.
Shortly before marking the one-year anniversary of the JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotel bombings, the International Crisis Group (ICG) released a report that claimed divisions between the country's different radical groups had left its jihadi movement weak and divided.
Sidney Jones, a ICG senior adviser, explained that the rifts demonstrate how radical ideologies are shifting toward seeing local enemies - such as police and lawmakers opposed to the creation of an Islamic state - as equal to Western ones. That ideological shift, she says, should concern police.
"There have been at least two police murders and they required only a few people. So you could continue to see these attacks mounted by only a tiny part of the radical movement," Jones said. Jones suggests that de-radicalization programs have so far failed because those who participate in them are seldom the hard-core ideologues.
Aziz, accused of providing sanctuary to Noordin at the time he was Indonesia's most-wanted terrorist, falls somewhere in between on that continuum. He says that the excessive use of force in counter-terrorism operations, and widespread official views that Islamists are enemies of the state, have hindered government efforts to neutralize Islamic radicalism.
He insists that Semarang's inmates are generally open-minded and do not approve of acts that cause the death of innocents, but that the police must be willing to work with them. "If the police treat us with disrespect, we can be hard to them," Aziz said. "We are ready to die, and they are not."
Sara Schonhardt is a freelance writer based in Jakarta, Indonesia. She has lived and worked in Southeast Asia for six years and has a master's degree in international affairs from Columbia University.
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