Tag Archives: Terrorism

U.S. gives troops broader order to strike ISIS in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. military commanders have been given the authority to target Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan, the Pentagon said on Thursday, the first such order beyond Iraq and Syria, where the militants control parts of both countries.

The U.S. State Department said last week that it had designated Islamic State’s offshoot in Afghanistan, known as Islamic State-Khorasan, as a foreign terrorist organization.

U.S. forces could previously strike Islamic State in Afghanistan but it was under more narrow circumstances, such as for protection of troops.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, a Republican who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the administration of President Barack Obama, a Democrat, “seems to be waking up to the fact that more than a year into the U.S. military campaign, ISIL’s reach is global and growing.”

McCain told a hearing on Thursday that the authorization given by the White House was much needed and “many of us may be interested to know that we confined our attacks on ISIL to Iraq and Syria.”

ISIL is another name for the Islamist militant group, which has supporters and sympathizers around the world who have carried out bombings and gun attacks on civilians, notably in Paris in November and San Bernardino, California, in December.

A Pentagon spokesman, Capt. Jeff Davis, said there had been an adjustment to the authorization for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, but he did not give details on when exactly it was given.

“As part of this mission, we will take action against any terrorist group that poses a threat to U.S. interests or the homeland, including members of ISIL-Khorasan,” Davis said.

Davis said there had been “some” strikes on the group in recent days.

The change in the authorization was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to the State Department, Islamic State-Khorasan was formed in January 2015, based in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, made up of former members of the Pakistani Taliban and Afghan Taliban.

U.S. Army General John Campbell, who leads international forces in Afghanistan, has said Islamic State had coalesced over the last five or six months in Nangarhar and Kunar provinces and had been fighting the Taliban for several months.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali; editing by Grant McCool)

U.S. begins implementing restrictions on visa-free travel

United States officials have begun implementing new policies regarding the country’s Visa Waiver Program, the State Department announced Thursday.

The program allows citizens and nationals of 38 countries to visit the United States without obtaining a visa, provided they stay for fewer than 90 days.

Congress sought to reform the program in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks.

The new laws prevent anyone who has visited Iran, Iraq, Syria or Sudan since March 1, 2011, or holds citizenship in one of those four countries, from entering the United States through the Visa Waiver Program. They will now have to apply for a visa at a U.S. embassy, a process that includes an in-person interview.

A White House fact sheet says 20 million people visit the United States under the Visa Waiver Program every year, and the program had utilized security checks designed to keep terrorists and other potential security threats out of the nation.

Those who sought to reform the program said there were shortcomings in that screening process, and Congress voted to approve the changes in December.

Representative Candice Miller (R-Michigan), who originally introduced the legislation, issued a statement when it was passed. She said the bill “improves our ability to identify and stop individuals who have traveled to terrorist hotspots to join ISIS and other like-minded organizations before they reach U.S. soil.”

In a news release, State Department officials said “the great majority” of people who use the Visa Waiver Program would not be affected by the changes.

The department added that Secretary of Homeland Security can waive the visa requirement for individuals who went to the aforementioned four countries on a case-by-case basis. People who traveled for diplomatic reasons, humanitarian work, military service or as a journalist may qualify for waivers.

Islamic State attack sets storage tanks ablaze at Libyan oil terminal

BENGHAZI/TRIPOLI, Libya (Reuters) – Islamic State militants set fire on Thursday to oil storage tanks in a fresh assault on Ras Lanuf terminal in northern Libya and the group threatened further attacks as they exploit a prolonged power vacuum in the large north African nation.

The chairman of the National Oil Corporation, Mustafa Sanalla, told reporters in Tripoli that Ras Lanuf – shut since December 2014 – would remain closed for a “long time” because of the damage inflicted on Thursday and in earlier attacks.

Libya remains dogged by violence and political turmoil nearly five years after the overthrow of veteran leader Muammar Gaddafi, with two rival governments and parliaments based in Tripoli and in the east as well as various armed factions vying for power and a share of the country’s oil wealth.

The Islamic State militants drove into the oil storage site early in the morning and clashed with security guards before retreating and firing from a distance to set four tanks on fire, NOC spokesman Mohamed al-Harari said.

A pipeline leading from the Amal oil field to the nearby Es Sider terminal, the biggest on Libya’s Mediterranean coast, was also targeted, said Mohamed al-Manfi, an energy official allied with Libya’s eastern-based government.

Ras Lanuf and Es Sider together have an export capacity of 600,000 barrels per day. They were processing about half of that before they were both closed in December 2014.

The NOC said the area was facing an “environmental catastrophe”, with huge columns of smoke billowing from the fires and damage to power lines supplying residential and industrial districts.

“Residents are trying to build a barrier to stop the oil and fire from reaching gas pipelines and water pipelines, and the main road,” the NOC’s Harari said.

Islamic State militants have managed to establish a foothold in the city of Sirte, which lies about 125 miles along the coast to the west of Ras Lanuf and Es Sider.

In a video posted on Islamic State’s official Telegram channel, fighter Abu Abdelrahman al-Liby said: “Today Es Sider port and Ras Lanuf and tomorrow the port of Brega and after the ports of Tobruk, Es Serir, Jallo, and al-Kufra.”

OIL PRODUCTION DISRUPTED

Libya’s current oil production stands at 362,000 barrels per day, he told Reuters. That is less than a quarter of a 2011 high of 1.6 million barrels per day, though production has not changed significantly in recent weeks.

Two weeks ago clashes between Islamic State and the Petroleum Facilities Guards who control the area around Es Sider and Ras Lanuf left seven oil storage tanks damaged by fire and at least 18 guards dead.

At least 1.3 million barrels of oil were lost as a result of the clashes and up to 3 million barrels could be at risk because of the latest attack, said NOC spokesman Harari.

The NOC sent a tanker to remove oil from the terminals in an effort to prevent further damage, but guards prevented it from loading, citing security concerns.

On Thursday the NOC blamed the “intransigence” of the Petroleum Facilities Guards in blocking the shipment for the further damage it suffered from the latest attack.

The guards are led by a federalist who has supported Libya’s eastern government, but analysts say their loyalties are uncertain within the country’s complex pattern of allegiances.

(Additional reporting by Ali Abdelaty in Cairo and Aidan Lewis in Tunis; Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Gareth Jones)

West African hotels boost security after Burkina attack

DAKAR (Reuters) – West African hotels from Dakar to N’Djamena are strengthening security, adding armed guards and increasing cooperation with local authorities as a pair of high-profile attacks have exposed a growing Islamist threat to foreign travelers.

Al Qaeda fighters killed 30 people on Friday at a hotel and restaurant in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. The assault, the country’s first militant attack on such a scale, came just two months after Islamist militants killed 20 people at a Radisson hotel in Mali’s capital Bamako.

In both instances the attacks targeted establishments popular with Westerners, dozens of whom were taken hostage. Witnesses to the Ouagadougou attack spoke of gunmen singling out white foreigners for execution.

High-end hotels in major cities across the region have been quick to react in the wake of the violence, which diplomats and analysts warn likely marks a new strategy by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and its allies.

Abidjan and Dakar, the largest cities in Ivory Coast and Dakar, are viewed as particularly attractive to Islamist militants due to their large Western expatriate populations and steady flow of tourists and business travelers.

“If you strike the capital, you are seen to be striking harder and the threat is there for other cities like Dakar and Abidjan,” Cynthia Ohayon, West Africa analyst at International Crisis Group, said by phone from Ouagadougu.

But diplomats said they had no information on specific threats in either city.

At the Sofitel Hotel Ivoire, one of Ivory Coast’s most luxurious hotels, uniformed police officers were posted around the grounds. The use of metal detectors and body searches was being ramped up. Guard dogs were used to help patrol the lobby.

The 358-room luxury hotel is regularly fully booked as Ivory Coast’s booming economy draws investors and business people from around the world. It also plays host to large international meetings at its adjoining conference center.

“Since the beginning of the week, the security measures have been reinforced,” said Alfred Kouassi, a hotel employee working in the lobby. “The police often come to speak to us with us.”

In Senegal, gendarmes have been deployed at roundabouts and on major streets in neighborhoods popular with Westerners.

Dakar’s Radisson Blu, the sister hotel of the establishment attacked in Bamako in November, installed additional cameras inside and outside, ordered vehicle barriers and had increased security personnel well before the Ouagadougou attacks.

“Of course, there is always a risk, but I can assure you that we have in place all the precautions to control the building in the most professional way,” said Jorgen Jorgensen, the hotel’s general manager.

In Chad’s capital N’Djamena, which was hit by deadly attacks by Islamists in June and July, the government has called upon hotels to carry out car and body searches as well as increase their collaboration with local authorities.

TOURISM THREATENED

While tourism to the region has long been hobbled by poor infrastructure and expensive air travel, it had recently seemed that change was in the air.

Low-budget airlines have launched or expanded in the continent. West Africa had 13,500 hotel rooms in development in 2014, a third of the continent’s total.

Senegal – one of three countries in the region, along with Nigeria and Ghana, that had surpassed 1 million international arrivals – aims to triple tourists by 2025.

Ivory Coast had the third-largest growth of visitor arrivals in Africa in 2014, according to the African Development Bank.

But suddenly the outlook looks much less rosy.

Even in Senegal, long considered to be a bulwark of stability, France has urged citizens to avoid public locations including nightclubs and stadiums.

At the Hotel du Phare, a budget hotel in Dakar that hosts weekly parties popular among twenty-something expatriates, bag checks and security guards for their soirees had increased and secondary doors had been closed.

Penelope Theodosis, who manages the hotel along with her husband, said she had a guard stationed outside at night, but added that she was walking a fine line between making her guests feel safe and frightening them.

“We only have nine rooms … A guardian inside the hotel would cause more fear than reassurance.”

(Additional reporting by Loucoumane Coulibaly in Abidjan and Madjiasra Nako in N’Djamena; Editing by Joe Bavier and Ralph Boulton)

Pakistan attack raises tough question: Should teachers shoot back?

CHARSADDA, Pakistan/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Stuck with 15 of his students on a third floor balcony of a campus building as gunmen came up the stairs, university director Mohammad Shakil urged Pakistani police arriving at the scene to toss him up a gun so he could shoot back.

“We were hiding … but were unarmed,” Shakil told Reuters, speaking after four Islamist militants attacked Bacha Khan University in Pakistan’s troubled northwest on Wednesday, killing more than 20 people.

“I was worried about the students, and then one of the militants came after us,” Shakil added. “After repeated requests, the police threw me a pistol and I fired some shots at the terrorists.”

As more details of Wednesday’s assault emerged, attention focused on at least two members of staff who took up arms to resist attackers bent on killing them and their students.

Some hailed them as heroes, as the country digested an attack which bore similarities to the massacre, in late 2014, of 134 pupils at an army-run school in Peshawar, about 19 miles from where this week’s violence occurred.

Others questioned whether teachers should be armed, as many are, because it goes against the ideals of the profession.

Such a dilemma may have been far from the mind of chemistry professor Hamid Hussain, as he locked himself inside a room with colleagues after gunmen stormed an accommodation block on the university campus.

When the assailants broke down the door, Hussain fired several rounds from his pistol, according to Shabir Ahmad Khan, an English department lecturer taking cover in an adjacent washroom.

“They carried on heavy shooting and I was preparing myself for death, but then they did not enter the washroom and left,” Khan recalled.

Later on in the same building, Hussain fired again at the militants to allow some of his students to get away, surviving pupils told local media. Hussain was subsequently shot and later died from his wounds.

“Kudos to professor Dr Hamid Hussain. Our hero fought bravely n saved many,” Asma Shirazi, a popular talk show host, said on Twitter.

TEACHERS’ DILEMMA

Others, too, have credited the actions of Hussain and Shakil with helping to prevent the gunmen, armed with assault rifles and hand grenades, from spilling more blood.

Bacha Khan University also employed around 50 of its own guards who, witnesses said, fought for close to an hour to keep the gunmen isolated and prevent them from entering the girl’s hostel as the police and army arrived.

Pakistan army spokesman General Asim Bajwa said the security guards responded “very well” to the attack before reinforcements reached them.

In the wake of the 2014 school massacre, teachers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where Peshawar is located, were offered weapons training. Yet some are wary of arming teachers and encouraging them to engage in battle.

Gun ownership is common in Pakistan, owing to liberal licensing laws, and particularly so in the semi-autonomous tribal belt near the Afghan border where the threat of militant violence is high.

Jamil Chitrali, president of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa University Teaching Staff Association, said more teachers were now carrying personal weapons, as security had worsened.

“Arms are against the norms of my profession,” he said. “I am teaching principles and morality in the class. How I can carry a gun?”

WHO IS TO BLAME?

Four gunmen, all since killed, were involved in Wednesday’s attack, officials said. They used the cover of thick fog to scale the campus’ rear walls, before storming student dormitories and classrooms and executing people at will.

Some 3,000 students were enrolled at the university, many living on campus, while hundreds of visitors had arrived to hear a poetry recital to commemorate the life of local Pashtun nationalist hero and pacifist Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, after whom the university is named.

The provincial government declared a day of mourning on Thursday as grieving families buried their dead and survivors recalled their ordeal.

Who was to blame remains a mystery. A senior commander of the Pakistan Taliban, Umar Mansoor, on Wednesday claimed responsibility, but an official spokesman for the group later denied involvement, calling the attack “un-Islamic”.

The hardline Islamist movement was believed to be behind the school massacre just over a year ago, and educational institutions are an increasingly common target for militants wanting to frighten the public.

Pakistan has killed and arrested hundreds of suspected Taliban militants in the last year under a major crackdown against a group fighting to overthrow the government and install a strict interpretation of Islamic law.

The army said on Thursday the attack in Charsadda, near Peshawar, was coordinated from across the border inside Afghanistan, according to its investigations.

Army chief General Raheel Sharif has called Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and the U.S. commander of international forces in Afghanistan to ask their help in locating those it holds responsible for the assault, army spokesman Bajwa said on Twitter.

(Editing by Mike Collett-White)

Belgium detains two more suspects over Paris attacks

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Belgium has arrested two more men suspected of links to the Paris attacks on Nov. 13 in which 130 people were killed, the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office said on Thursday.

The men, identified as Belgian national Zakaria J., born in 1986 and Moroccan national Mustafa E., born in 1981, were arrested during two house searches on Wednesday and Thursday morning in the Brussels district of Molenbeek, prosecutors said.

“Both were arrested due to their possible ties with different suspects in this case,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement. “The Investigating Judge will decide later today upon their possible further detention.”

No arms or explosives were found during the searches, it added.

Since the November Paris attacks federal prosecutors have already taken 10 people into custody over their suspected involvement, which appear to have been prepared mainly in Belgium.

If the two latest detainees are kept in custody, their number would rise to 12.

Last week, investigators said a number of the Paris attackers used two apartments and a house in Belgium as possible safe houses in the weeks leading up to their coordinated shooting and suicide bomb assault on the French capital.

They also found a possible bomb factory for the Paris attacks in the Brussels district of Schaerbeek, with traces of explosives.

(Reporting by Jan Strupczewski; Editing by Alissa de Carbonnel and Dominic Evans)

Militants storm Pakistan university, death toll rises

CHARSADDA, Pakistan/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Armed militants stormed a university in volatile northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing at least 20 people and wounding dozens a little more than a year after the massacre of 134 students at a school in the area, officials said.

A senior Pakistani Taliban commander claimed responsibility for the assault in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, but an official spokesman later denied involvement, calling the attack “un-Islamic”.

The violence nevertheless shows that militants retain the ability to launch attacks, despite a country-wide anti-terrorism crackdown and a military campaign against their strongholds along the lawless border with Afghanistan.

A security official said the death toll could rise to as high as 40 at Bacha Khan University in the city of Charsadda. The army said it had concluded operations to clear the campus six hours after the attack began, and that four gunmen were dead.

A spokesman for rescue workers, Bilal Ahmad Faizi, said 19 bodies had been recovered including students, guards, policemen and at least one teacher, named by media as chemistry professor Syed Hamid Husain. Husain reportedly shot back at the gunmen with a pistol to allow his students to flee.

Many of the dead were apparently shot in the head execution-style, TV footage showed.

The militants, using the cover of thick, wintry fog, scaled the walls of the university on Wednesday morning before entering buildings and opening fire on students and teachers in classrooms and hostels, police said.

Students told media they saw several young men wielding AK-47 guns storming the university housing where many students were sleeping.

“They came from behind and there was a big commotion,” an unnamed male student told a news channel from a hospital bed in Charsadda’s District Hospital. “We were told by teachers to leave immediately. Some people hid in bathrooms.”

Thirty five of the wounded remain in hospital, a local police official said late on Wednesday.

CONTRADICTING CLAIMS

The gunmen attacked as the university prepared to host a poetry recital on Wednesday afternoon to commemorate the death anniversary of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a popular ethnic Pashtun independence activist after whom the university is named.

Vice Chancellor Fazal Rahim told reporters that the university teaches over 3,000 students and was hosting an additional 600 visitors for the poetry recital.

Umar Mansoor, a senior Pakistani Taliban commander involved in the December 2014 attack on the army school in Peshawar, claimed responsibility for the Charsadda assault and said it involved four of his men.

He told Reuters by telephone the university was targeted because it was a government institution that supported the army.

However, later in the day, official Taliban spokesman Muhammad Khorasani issued a written statement disassociating the militants from the attack, calling it un-Islamic.

“Youth who are studying in non-military institutions, we consider them as builders of the future nation and we consider their safety and protection our duty,” the statement said.

The reason for the conflicting claims was not immediately clear. While the Taliban leadership is fractured, Mansoor is believed to remain loyal to central leader Mullah Fazlullah.

The Pakistani Taliban are fighting to topple the government and install a strict interpretation of Islamic law. They are loosely allied with the Afghan Taliban who ruled most of Afghanistan until they were overthrown by U.S.-backed military action in 2001.

By afternoon on Wednesday, the military said all four gunmen had been killed.

“The operation is over and the university has been cleared,” Pakistan army spokesman General Asim Bajwa said.

A security official close to the operation said he had seen the four gunmen’s bodies riddled with bullets. He said none of the gunmen was wearing a suicide vest, but they carried guns and grenades.

RUMORS OF ATTACK

Television footage showed military vehicles packed with soldiers driving into the campus as helicopters buzzed overhead and ambulances lined up outside the main gate while anxious parents consoled each other.

Shabir Khan, a lecturer in the English department, said he was about to leave his university housing for the department when firing began.

“Most of the students and staff were in classes when the firing began,” Khan said.

Several schools had closed early at the weekend around Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, after rumors circulated of a possible attack.

The area has been on edge since the December 2014 massacre by six gunmen in Peshawar.

Pakistan, which has suffered from years of jihadist militant violence, has killed and arrested hundreds of suspected militants under a major crackdown launched afterwards.

The Peshawar school attack was seen as having hardened Pakistan’s resolve to fight militants along its lawless border with Afghanistan.

“We are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland,” Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said in a statement after Wednesday’s attack.

(Additional reporting by Saud Mehsud. Writing by Tommy Wilkes and Kay Johnson; Editing by Nick Macfie)

In Paris, military chiefs vow to intensify Islamic State fight

PARIS (Reuters) – Defense chiefs from the United States, France, Britain and four other countries pledged on Wednesday to intensify their fight against Islamic State, in an effort to capitalize on recent battlefield gains against the militants.

Islamic State lost control of the western Iraqi city of Ramadi last month, in a sorely needed victory for U.S.-backed Iraqi forces. But critics, including some in the U.S. Congress, say the U.S. strategy is still far too weak and lacks sufficient military support from Sunni Arab allies.

“We agreed that we all must do more,” U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter told a news conference after talks in Paris among the “core” military coalition members, which also included Germany, Italy, Australia and the Netherlands.

A joint statement by the Western ministers re-committed their governments to work with the U.S.-led coalition “to accelerate and intensify the campaign.”

The Paris setting for the talks itself sent a message, coming just over two months after the city was struck by deadly shooting and bombing attacks claimed by Islamic State.

French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian sounded an upbeat tone about the campaign, saying Islamic State was in retreat.

“Because Daesh is retreating on the ground and … because we have been able to hit its resources, it’s now time to increase our collective effort by putting in place a coherent military strategy,” he said.

British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said the goal was now to “tighten the noose around the head of the snake in Syria in Raqqa.”

Carter forecast that the coalition would need to ramp up the number of police and military trainers. He also emphasized preparations to eventually recapture the Iraqi city of Mosul from Islamic State and the expanding role of U.S. special operations forces in Iraq and Syria.

COALITION NOT “WINNING”

Still, U.S. Senator John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and other critics of U.S. President Barack Obama’s approach to the war effort say Islamic State still poses a potent threat.

“ISIL has lost some territory on the margin, but has consolidated power in its core territories in both Iraq and Syria,” McCain said at a Wednesday hearing on U.S. war strategy, using another acronym for Islamic State.

“Meanwhile, ISIL continues to metastasize across the region in places like Afghanistan, Libya, Lebanon, Yemen, and Egypt. Its attacks are now global, as we saw in Paris.”

Carter has sought to lay out a strategy to confront Islamic State, both by wiping out its strongholds in Iraq and Syria and by addressing its spread beyond its self-declared caliphate.

But U.S. officials have declined to set a timeline for what could be a long-term campaign that also requires political reconciliation to ultimately succeed.

Carter announced a meeting next month of defense ministers from all 26 military members of the anti-Islamic State coalition, as well as Iraq, in what he described as the first face-to-face meeting of its kind.

“Every nation must come prepared to discuss further contributions to the fight,” he said. “And I will not hesitate to engage and challenge current and prospective members of the coalition as we go forward.”

(Additional reporting by Marine Pennetier, editing by Larry King)

Indonesia looks to stop militants overseas from returning home, planning attacks

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesian President Joko Widodo is considering a regulation that would prohibit Indonesians from joining radical groups overseas, in an effort to prevent a deadlier attack than last week’s militant assault on Jakarta.

At a meeting on Tuesday at the palace, top political and security officials agreed to review anti-terrorism laws, which currently allow Indonesians to freely return home after fighting with Islamic State in Syria.

Security forces fear that returning jihadis could launch a much more calculated attack than the amateurish assault militants launched on Thursday using two pistols and eleven low-yield homemade bombs. Eight people were killed in the attack, including the four attackers.

“We’ve agreed to review the terrorism law to focus on prevention,” parliamentary speaker Zulkifli Hasan told Reuters.

“Currently there is nothing in the law covering training. There is also nothing currently covering people going overseas (to join radical groups) and returning. This needs to be broadened.”

Proposed revisions would also tighten prison sentences for terrorism offences, he said.

Chief security minister Luhut Pandjaitan told reporters the new regulation would allow suspects to be temporarily detained.

“The point is to give police the authority to preemptively and temporarily detain (a suspect) while they get information to prevent future incidents,” Pandjaitan said, adding the detention could last up to two weeks.

Widodo said discussions on the new regulation, which would be a stop-gap measure until parliament can revise its anti-terrorism law, were still at “an early stage”.

“This is very pressing. Many people have left for Syria or returned,” he said, but did not say when a decision would be made.

Roughly 500 Indonesians are believed by authorities to have traveled to the Middle East to join Islamic State. About 100 are believed to have returned, most of whom did not see frontline combat.

Indonesian Police Chief Badrodin Haiti told Reuters in an interview Monday that the country was bracing for the return of these more experienced fighters, who may be capable of carrying out far more sophisticated operations than last week’s attack, which was hampered by poor training and weapons.

Thursday’s bombings and shootings in the heart of Jakarta were the first attack in Indonesia attributed to Islamic State. The last major militant attacks in the country were in 2009, when suicide bombers struck two luxury hotels in the city.

Even if the new revisions are imposed, Indonesia would still have weaker anti-terrorism laws than some of its neighbors.

Malaysia last April passed a law reintroducing detention without trial, three years after a similar measure was revoked. Australia has in recent years passed measures banning its citizens from returning from conflict zones in Syria and the Middle East, while making it easier to monitor domestic communications.

(Additional reporting by Jakarta bureau; Editing by Randy Fabi)

Indonesian prisons a breeding ground for Islamic militancy

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Afif was an inmate in a high-security Indonesian jail when he transformed from aspiring radical Islamist to soldier for Islamic State, ready to sacrifice his life for a group based thousands of miles away in the Middle East.

His journey ended with his death last week on a busy intersection in central Jakarta, after the gun and suicide bomb attack he launched with three other militants that brought Islamic State’s brand of violence to Southeast Asia for the first time.

Afif’s graduation from jailbird to jihadi shines a light on a prison system where staff shortages, overcrowding and corruption have allowed extremists to mingle and emerge as determined killers in the name of Islam.

Security officials say Afif, also known as Sunakim, was sentenced to seven years in prison for taking part in a militant training camp in the province of Aceh, where Islam is generally practiced in a stricter form than other parts of Indonesia.

Once behind bars, he refused to follow deradicalization programs, the officials added.

Akbar Hadi, spokesman for the Ministry of Law and Human Rights, declined to comment on whether Afif’s activities were monitored after he was released last August.

Police said he planned the Jakarta siege with the three other attackers, one of whom was also a former convict. Four civilians died in the attack along with the militants.

A report by the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC) last year said that 26 prisons across Indonesia housed about 270 “convicted terrorists”, but Islamic State supporters accounted for only a small minority of them.

National Police Chief Badrodin Haiti told Reuters that at least five jailed militants were believed to have been in communication with the plotters in the lead-up to the attack.

COURIERS, CELL PHONES

While inside Jakarta’s Cipinang prison, Afif was one of some 20 convicts heavily influenced by fellow convict and firebrand Islamist cleric Aman Abdurrahman, experts said.

From behind bars, Abdurrahman heads an umbrella organization formed last year through an alliance of splinter groups that support Islamic State.

“They shared the same cells, they prayed together, they cooked together,” said Taufik Andrie, Jakarta-based executive director of the Institute for International Peacebuilding.

Abdurrahman regularly spread “takfiri” doctrine, a belief among Sunni militants who justify their violence by branding others as infidels, through his sermons and lectures.

Abdurrahman was moved to a maximum security prison in Nusakambangan in Central Java in 2013, but continued to communicate with Afif and a growing group of around 200 followers using couriers and cell phones.

A lawyer for Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, another high-profile radical inmate at Nusakambangan, told Reuters it is easy to convey messages to the outside world from inside prison.

“Any kind of visitor is allowed and even if they don’t exchange any cell phones, there is still an exchange of information and the visitor can interpret that,” said Achmad Michdan.

SOCIAL MEDIA A KEY TOOL

Experts say radical inmates like Abdurrahman still get away with disseminating sermons by email, Facebook, and hard copies. Despite being behind bars, Abdurrahman was able to make an online pledge of allegiance to Islamic State in 2014.

“Those with more radical thinking can also hold religious sermons on a regular basis and it is very easy to convey radical ideas to others,” said Farihin, a former militant who participated in a government deradicalization program during his time in a prison in Palu on the island of Sulawesi.

Indonesia’s counter-terrorism chief, Saud Usman Nasution, told Reuters in November that prison officials were unable to halt this type of communication because of overcrowding.

“We are aware that there is a problem with convicts being allowed to communicate using the Internet and cell phones. There is definitely room for improvement,” said Ministry of Law and Human Rights spokesman Hadi, adding that inmates cannot be forced to join deradicalization programs.

Experts say access to social media and messaging apps like Telegram is a large part of the problem.

Police believe the alleged mastermind of the Jakarta attack, an Indonesian fighting with Islamic State in Syria called Bahrun Naim, used social media to communicate his radical ideas to followers in Indonesia.

He may also have transferred thousands of dollars to accounts here, police said.

Since the attack, Indonesia has blocked websites and sent letters to social media networks Twitter, Facebook and Telegram, asking them to take down radical content.

(Additional reporting by Aubrey Belford; Editing by John Chalmers and Mike Collett-White)