Hmmmm...the headline is hyperbole, but the death is likely significant:
Azahari killing blow to terrorists
Azahari bin Husin, who was killed during a police raid on a terrorist hide-out in the East Java town of Batu, topped wanted lists across Southeast Asia for his bomb-making expertise and his determination to carry out attacks on Western interests in the region.
Known as the "Demolition Man," the bespectacled Malaysian is believed to have been one of five key members of the al-Qaida linked terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, blamed for a series of deadly terror strikes in Indonesia.
Arrested members of the network have said they were motivated in part by anger at US foreign policy in the Muslim world, and that their ultimate goal was to establish an Islamic state across parts of Southeast Asia.
"The group's operation capability will be reduced significantly as of today," said Major General Ansyaad Mbai, a top Indonesian anti-terror official. "But it is still dangerous because this movement is based on ideological and political motives. It cannot be stopped by the arrest and killing of one leader."
Azahari is accused of playing a key planning and operational role in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings, two attacks in Jakarta in 2003 and 2004, as well as last month's restaurant blasts, also on Bali. More than 240 people many of them foreign tourists were killed in all four attacks.
Azahari, along with fellow Malaysian militant Noordin Top, eluded capture for years by renting cheap houses in densely populated areas. Noordin's whereabouts remain unknown, but police say they normally travelled apart.
Azahari, in his 40s, is a native of the southern Malaysian state of Johor. He studied mechanical engineering at Adelaide University in Australia before getting a doctorate in property valuation from Reading University in England in 1990.
He was a university professor before reportedly joining Jemaah Islamiyah. Azahari is known to have received bomb-making training in Mindanao in the southern Philippines in 1999, and advanced training in Afghanistan in 2000.
An elite US-trained police unit raided Azahari's hide out in Batu in east Java Province on Thursday. Officers shot him just seconds before he was able to detonate a suicide belt around his waist. Another militant holed up with managed to blow himself up to avoid capture.
Indonesia authorities have long suspected that he would rather die than be arrested.
Ken Conboy, an Indonesia-based terror expert, said police were hoping to catch him alive.
"This has deprived the authorities from gaining exploitable information with regard to future plans, financing, stockpiled explosives, and new suicide recruits," he said.
Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said he thought Azahari would have not been much help to investigators anyway.
"I think someone like Azahari ... was unlikely to ever co-operate," he said in Thailand. He said the Indonesian police "were fortunate that no one lost their lives Thursday in that very critical operation."
Australian Prime Minister John Howard said Azahari's death was "good news."
Indonesian police had been after the Adelaide-educated former university lecturer and fellow Malaysian Noordin Top since the first Bali bombings in 2002, in which 88 Australians were among the 202 people slain.
"It doesn't mean that JI (Jemaah Islamiyah) is crippled but it does mean that somebody that is believed to have been behind the two Bali attacks, the Marriott attack and the attack on the Australian Embassy in Jakarta may well have been taken out of the equation. If that is confirmed, then that is a huge advance, but we're going to embroiled in this struggle for years into the future." ........
http://english.people.com.cn/200511/11/eng20051111_220583.html
As the apparent bomb maker for both Bali bombings, as well as the Jakarta Oz Embassy bombing, this is a significant event for Australians.
What is also, I think, interesting, is to not the apparent quite extensive (and fairly quiet) co operation between Oz and Indonesia re terrorism.
After we went into East Timor, it felt as though it would take forever for Indosnesian/Oz relations to settle down (and I, personally, believed we were a strong terror target for Indonesian Islamic extremists from at least that moment on), however, there was actually a contingent of Australian Federal (I think, or Special Branch???) police very near to where this shooting began, and they moved to the scene quickly.
Meanwhile, more arrests, and the release of the alleged target for the terror attack:
18th Terror Suspect Arrested in Australia
Friday November 11, 2005 1:31 AM
By MERAIAH FOLEY
Associated Press Writer
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) - Australian police arrested an 18th suspect Thursday in an alleged terror plot that a lawmaker said involved a large quantity of explosives.
A lawyer for eight of the suspects - Muslims from Sydney - accused authorities of holding them in ``shameful'' conditions and said prosecutors have produced no evidence of an imminent terror attack in the country.
Police threw a security cordon around the Sydney courtroom where the men's cases were being heard. The eight were expected to appear in court via video links.
The latest suspect to be arrested was a 25-year-old man who was seized Thursday by counterterrorism officers in Sydney and charged with being a member of an unspecified terrorist organization, New South Wales state police said in a statement. The other 17 were arrested in coordinated pre-dawn raids on Tuesday in Sydney and the southern city of Melbourne.
Ten of the suspects have been charged with being members of a terrorist organization and eight with conspiracy to plan a terrorist act. The charges all carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported that the Sydney arm of the alleged Islamic terror network had stockpiled enough chemicals to make at least 15 large bombs.
Also Thursday, lawmakers began debating Prime Minister John Howard's proposed raft of tough new anti-terrorism laws and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the government would consider introducing laws to strip convicted terrorists of their Australian citizenship.
The anti-terror legislation, which has met with opposition from legal and civil rights groups, would enable authorities to hold terror suspects without charge for two weeks and monitor them with electronic tracking devices for up to a year.
The proposed laws also toughen jail terms for inciting race hatred or violence against the community, and have been criticized as an attack on free speech.
Adam Houda, a lawyer for eight of the Sydney suspects, slammed the case against the men as weak and criticized an expected delay in prosecutors giving him more details about evidence.
``These people are being treated differently, the conditions they are being held under are, I believe, shameful,'' Houda said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5407450,00.html
OFFICE TOWER TERROR TARGET
By ELISSA HUNT, MARK DUNN, PAUL ANDERSON and ELLEN WHINNETT
10nov05
A MELBOURNE office tower housing many hundreds of public servants was among possible targets of an alleged terror plot foiled by raids this week.
Police found a map of the Casselden Place building - the Commonwealth Government's main offices in Melbourne - during searches linked to nine Victorians now in custody charged with terrorism offences.
Senior Detective Jennifer Bannan-Moss, from the joint counter-terrorism team, yesterday told Melbourne Magistrates Court of the map during a bail hearing for Abdullah Merhi, 20, who police allege had volunteered to become a suicide bomber, and Hany Taha, 21.
Magistrate Reg Marron referred to the map when he refused bail.
"A search of a property found a map of Casselden Place, a Commonwealth facility in Melbourne. It is not known the significance of this," Mr Marron said. He described the allegations as "extremely alarming".
The 43-storey Casselden tower, at the corner of Lonsdale and Spring streets, houses federal agencies including the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Immigration, and the Australian Taxation Office.
Bureaucrats leaving the tower yesterday said they had received emails from managers advising a threat to the building had been identified, but there was no cause for alarm.
Solicitor Rob Stary, acting for eight of the accused terrorists, said outside court there was no evidence of an imminent attack and no specific allegations had been made in relation to the Casselden map.
"It's just been raised . . . without reference to it being some area that is prospectively at risk," he said.
The map revelation came as Australian Federal Police revealed a 10th Victorian suspect was also being sought by authorities and more Victorian raids were likely.
In other developments:
A PRISON boss told the court the accused will be held in solitary confinement in Barwon Prison until their case is heard in January.
FORMER Home and Away actor Omar Baladjam, wounded in an shootout with Sydney police, became the 17th person to be charged during a hospital bedside court sitting.
ALLEGED Melbourne mastermind Abdul Benbrika has been living off taxpayer-funded welfare payments for a decade, documents show.
Police allege they have 240 hours of secretly recorded conversations - most from Mr Benbrika's home.
They say the recordings show each member of the group was committed to violent jihad, had contributed to a fighting fund and spoke of martyrdom for the cause.
The group had allegedly ordered a "massive quantity" of chemistry items from a Melbourne supplier including beakers, burners and thermometers.
Police also claim they were recorded discussing sourcing chemicals which had been difficult to access since the September 11 attacks, and their Sydney counterparts had been trying to buy the sort of chemicals used in the London bombings.
Mr Benbrika, 45, is also charged with directing the organisation, which carries a maximum 25-year term.
It is believed the seven Sydney men charged on Tuesday were last night being moved by police convoy. Authorities refused to confirm the transfer, but television footage showed convoys heading out of Sydney under heavy security.
It is believed the men will be taken to Goulburn's Supermax facility, on the NSW southern tablelands......
http://www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,17196500%255E910,00.html
So, more Oklahoma City than Bali, perhaps...
The Australian Newspaper's editorial (conservative press)
Editorial: Truth about terror
Terrorists are always the enemies of all good Muslims
November 12, 2005
THERE was a great deal of sense spoken this week by Australian Muslim leaders, horrified by the possibility that members of their community could turn to terror. Such as Waleed Aly, from the Islamic Council of Victoria, who says Australian Muslims will welcome fair trials for the men charged with terror offences during the week. And also Nabil Ibrahim, from Australian Muslim Doctors, who says Muslims quietly support the arrests. These are commonsense comments that demonstrate the core issue of the terror threat - that all over the world, people who believe their religion calls them to kill are murdering Muslims. And, right round the world, adherents of Islam when given half a chance turn their back on the tyranny of terrorists. The reason al-Qa'ida tried to block elections and the constitutional referendum in Iraq is because they know they will never win power if ordinary people can elect their rulers. And they are right. As last year's elections in Indonesia and Malaysia demonstrated, Muslims look to politicians to provide the same things everybody else does: stability, prosperity and freedom under the rule of law. And the vast majority of Muslims are not interested in imposing their beliefs on anybody else.
But people whose politics encourage them to assume the colonialist crimes of the US and its allies created Islamic terrorism, and are even responsible for the alienation of young Muslims in Western countries, are claiming confirmation for their opinions from a week of news that went from bad to worse. In France, mainly Muslim mobs raged against the state in riots beyond the power of the police to stop. At home we saw 18 men charged with terror offences. In Iraq, there were assassinations and a lawyer representing one of Saddam Hussein's co-accused was killed. On Thursday, more than 40 people were killed by suicide bombers and 56 innocents were similarly slaughtered in Jordan. Certainly, there was good news - of a sort. Azahari bin Husin, Jemaah Islamiah's bombing mastermind, killed himself to avoid capture. But his death does not end the terror threat in our region. For those whose response to terror is to say we have brought it on ourselves, the ways to end terrorism are obvious. Only addressing the grievances of Muslims against Israel can reduce the risk of terror attack. Only by abandoning Iraq can the allies atone for turning out the tyrant Saddam. This is all nonsense. The al-Qa'ida organisation was committing terrorist acts for almost a decade before Osama bin Laden started making pronouncements about Israel. And September 11, in 2001, and the first Bali bombing, in 2002, occurred before the invasion of Iraq.
The appeasers completely miss the point. People killed in Jordan and Iraq this week by suicide bombers were Muslims. Aspiring terrorists are generally young men with few skills who turn to extremism to give their lives a purpose, however twisted. Nor is there any reasoning with their leaders. And none of them much mind who they kill, because everybody who is not with them is against them. The tactical solution to contain terror is to use the full force of the law to stop terrorists before they strike. The strategic answer is to ensure their causes falter for want of recruits. And it is here that Australia, unlike France, is on the right course. In France, Muslim immigrants and their children feel they are second-class citizens. And in the way the failed French welfare state ensures official unemployment is 10 per cent, around twice the Australian level, it consigns a disproportionate number of young Muslim men to idleness and alienation. In contrast, Australia requires all migrants to respect our laws and embrace our values, but respects the rights of all to live and worship as they wish. And the best defences against isolation and anger are the opportunity to work hard and buy a home. The events of the last week make it quite clear: there is no negotiating with terror. But they also show this is a struggle between people of all, and no, religions and tiny numbers of men who are as ignorant as they are evil.......
Oz gripped in debate about the threat to fee speech in new anti terror laws.....specifically re "sedition"
PM refuses to budge on sedition
Lachlan Heywood
12nov05
PRIME Minister John Howard has defiantly ruled out watering down the terror package to accommodate the Opposition or disgruntled members of his own party.
Mr Howard yesterday said the sedition provisions of the anti-terrorism Bill would be kept, despite growing criticism they have nothing to do with terror.
Victorian Liberal MP Petro Georgiou told Parliament on Thursday that the provisions were problematic and required "serious review".
One of the concerns is that journalists or their editors could run foul of the sedition laws if they reported events such as raids by security organisation ASIO.
But Mr Howard said media organisations had nothing to fear.
"There is nothing in these laws that is going to prevent legitimate, full reporting, consistent always with the power of courts to say that certain things for national security reasons can't be revealed and that's been the case for a long time," he said.
Debate on the Bill, which give authorities greater power to stop, question, search and detain terror suspects, has been adjourned until Parliament resumes at the end of the month. In the meantime, the controversial legislation will be examined by a Senate inquiry.
A review will also be held into the contentious sedition provisions, but only after they are passed.
Mr Howard said the package had already been properly debated in the party room and would not be watered down.
"One of the strengths of this Government has been the willingness of the leadership of the Government to use the party room process to bring about change and improvement," he said.
"There is nothing that we have agreed to that alters the substance of or weakens the substance of what we are trying to achieve."
Opposition Leader Kim Beazley said Labor would continue to fight for amendments to ensure Australia's counter-terrorism laws had the right balance.
"We stand united with the Government and the premiers on the need to struggle with international terrorism," he said.
"But we also want common sense, and to include within this framework the sedition laws, which the premiers had no discussions with the Prime Minister about, is foolish and we say excise that."
Mr Beazley said Mr Howard's pledge to retain the sedition laws would be a test for Liberal backbenchers who had raised concerns.
"Sedition is about protecting governments from satirists. We are about protecting the Australian people from terrorists," he said.
Australian Federation of Islamic Councils Dr Ameer Ali said the events of the past week showed the Government already had sufficient powers to deal effectively with preventing terrorism.
"Muslims are not alone in expressing this concern," he said.
"Legal and constitutional experts as well as the media have expressed serious concerns in relation to issues of sedition, reporting of incidents and possible unlawful association."
http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,17213059%255E953,00.html
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace