Peter Dutton acts to ban IS-linked group that bombed churches

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has moved swiftly to ban Jamaah Anshurat Daulah, the group behind the Surabaya attacks.

Police at the site of a blast outside the Gereja Pantekosta Pusat Surabaya (Surabaya Centre Pentecostal Church) in Surabaya. Picture: AFP

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has moved swiftly to ban Jamaah Anshurat Daulah, the Islamic State-aligned terror group ­believed to be behind the suicide attacks in Indonesia, as part of a sweeping review of all terrorist groups in the region.

As fears grow that Islamic State is tightening its hold on the ­region’s Islamist groups, Mr Dutton said an “urgent review’’ was needed to assess the threat posed by the plethora of ISIS-inspired terror groups emerging in the ­region. Mr Dutton also said the government would move swiftly to outlaw the group, putting Australia in line with the US, which has already banned it.

“Given the horrific events in Surabaya, I have sought urgent ­advice from Home Affairs agencies on the proscription of JAD,’’ Mr Dutton told The Australian.

“I have also asked the Department of Home Affairs to undertake an urgent review of known and active terrorist organisations in the region to consider what further action we should take.”

JAD has emerged as the most lethal Indonesian terrorist group since Jemaah Islamiah, the perpetrator of the 2002 Bali bombings.

Indonesia terrorism expert Greg Fealy said JAD, which was behind a string of terrorist attacks across Indonesia, had demonstrated a level of technical sophistication not seen since the 2009 suicide attacks on Jakarta’s Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels, which killed nine.

That could suggest Indonesian jihadists were adopting the skills and expertise of returning foreign fighters from Syria and Iraq, Professor Fealy said.

“There were three different bombs, but one was a car-bomb, a powerful one,’’ Professor Fealy told The Australian. “That shows a capability in making bombs that most of the pro-IS groups haven’t possessed until now.’’

About 1100 Indonesians are thought to have travelled to Syria and Iraq, although the figure includes family groups. Professor Fealy said 500 were believed to still be there. While the number of fighters believed to have returned home varies wildly, figures from Turkish authorities revealed 435 Indonesian had been arrested in Turkey since 2015. Many were women and children who had travelled to the Syrian theatre with their jihadists husbands and fathers, but Professor Fealy said “dozens’’ of Indonesian fighters were thought to have slipped back into Indonesia.

The growing number of Indonesians with battlefield experience has given rise to fears that Southeast Asia is emerging as one of the most dangerous new fronts in the struggle against militant Islam.

Professor Fealy said Sunday’s attacks could have been connected to a string of other recent incidents, including the assault on the Depok detention centre, near Jakarta last week, which saw five officers killed by extremist prisoners.

“Either people are responding spontaneously or an instruction has gone out that these people should mobilise now,’’ Professor Fealy said.

In Australia, little is known about JAD — the umbrella term for a loose coalition of about two dozen Islamist groups organised by Syrian-based Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian Islamic State fighter in 2015.

Australian National University visiting professor and terrorism expert Clive Williams said the group claimed hundreds of members and was active in eight Indonesian provinces.

The group’s leader, Aman ­Abdurrahman, is currently on trial for a 2016 suicide attack in central Jakarta that killed four people, an amateurish attack believed to have been organised in conjunction with Naim, who authorities suspect was killed in Raqqa, Syria, last December.

Professor Fealy said JAD probably had a few hundred members and, despite Sunday’s attacks, had been hit hard by Indonesian counter-terrorism forces.

“It believes everything ISIS ­believes,’’ he said. “International government, sharia law applied comprehensively, that violence to achieve this is obligatory for Muslims. Its leaders have committed themselves to ISIS.”