JAKARTA - THE Singaporean nabbed in a round-up of Jemaah Islamiah suspects in Indonesia is a bomb-maker believed to be linked to escaped fugitive Mas Selamat Kastari, Indonesian police said yesterday.
Although police identified him only by his initials, MH, sources said that he is 35-year-old Mohammed Hassan.
A Singaporean of Pakistani descent, he is said to go by many aliases, including Abu Hazam, and has done his national service in the army.
Inspector-General Abu Bakar said: 'The Singaporean is wanted by the Singapore Government for his involvement in the terrorist network of Jemaah Islamiah, an organisation that is banned in Singapore.'
He said that the Singaporean was not Mas Selamat Kastari, as reported by a newspaper here, but confirmed that he was a member of the Singapore JI ring.
'We don't know where Mas Selamat Kastari is,' he told The Straits Times.
Although no further details were available on the Singaporean, experts believe that he is one of the terrorists who escaped before Singapore launched a dragnet in 2001.
The heavily armed anti-terror Detachment 88 arrested the Singaporean and nine other Islamic militants in a series of raids and seized a cache of high-powered explosives.
Police said the group planned terrorist attacks against Westerners in Jakarta and elsewhere in the archipelago.
The Singaporean was the first to be arrested - in Sekayu near Palembang in South Sumatra - on Saturday morning following a red notice issued by Singapore.
Such an international notice is a request for the arrest of a wanted person, with a view to extradition.
Following his interrogation, raids over the next four days netted the other nine militants, all Indonesians, in different places in Palembang.
The men all belong to a radical Muslim group known as Forum Anti Kemurtadan or forum against apostasy, which campaigned against Muslims converting to other religions.
Their leader is said to be a 42-year-old headmaster of a pesantren (Islamic boarding school) in Palembang, who has military experience in Afghanistan.
All but one of the men - believed to be the Singaporean - were flown to Jakarta yesterday, their faces covered with black masks as they left the police transport plane.
The men face the maximum death penalty if found guilty of violating anti-terrorism laws.
Police said that their interrogation of the suspects revealed that they planned to bomb a cafe in Bukit Tinggi, in West Sumatra province, and were involved in the attempted murder of a Christian priest named Joshua in Bandung in West Java in 2005.
Some of the suspects told police that they moved their targets from Sumatra to Jakarta after realising that they would have murdered many Indonesians.
There were no immediate details about the timing of the planned strikes.
At least 22 bombs were seized during raids in Palembang on Wednesday, some packed with bullets to maximise the impact of the blasts.
Many of the bombs were set to explode, said Insp-Gen Abu Bakar, noting that police also found explosive powders, a revolver and dozens of bullets, and several types of detonators.
The arrests highlighted the link between terrorists in Singapore and Indonesia and the ominous fact that the threat of terrorist attacks in the region remains very real.
A Singapore Home Ministry spokesman said yesterday: 'We have been in communication with our Indonesian counterparts. We can confirm that a Singaporean has been arrested by the Indonesian authorities and that he is not Mas Selamat Kastari.'
He added: 'As this is an ongoing operational matter, we are unable to share more details on this matter.'
The Singaporean confessed to being a bomb expert who had conducted 'bomb-making training' for several of the militants nabbed in Palembang.
He is said to be close to Azahari Husin, a Malaysian bomb-maker for JI who played key roles in terrorist attacks in Indonesia before he was killed in a police raid in East Java in 2005.
The Singaporean suspect allegedly met Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden several times and was working as an English-language teacher in the village when arrested.
