Indonesian police have arrested the leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah Islamic extremist network linked to al-Qaeda. According to authorities in Indonesia, the suspect has been recruiting members as well as facilitating their movement to Syria’s Northwest for training.
Para Wijayanto, is believed to have been a student of Abu Bakar Basyir, also known as Abu Bakar Bashir—the man accused of being the mastermind of the 2002 Bali bombings that killed more than 200 people. Bashir was the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI).
Wijayanto, who had been on the run since 2003 and had trained with terrorists in the southern Philippines, was arrested with his wife and four other members of JI outside Jakarta.
Indonesia has in the past been faced by a significant terror threat from JI which was strongly allied to Osama bin Laden and as such the recent fall of ISIS in the Middle East might have left a vacuum for JI to rise and reaffirm its ideology of establishing an Islamic caliphate in the Muslim majority Indonesia.
