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Indonesian Terrorists Fighting in Syria

Indonesian Terrorists Fighting in Syria
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Indonesia fears that its citizens, who have joined fellow extremists fighting in Syria, could help reinvigorate a once-powerful militant group responsible for major bombings in the world's most populous Muslim country, a report said.

Indonesian Terrorists Fighting in Syria"The conflict in Syria has captured the imagination of Indonesian extremists in a way no foreign war has before," said a report by Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict published this week.

It is a change of pattern for Indonesian militants who previously have gone to Afghanistan in the late 1980s and 1990s mainly for training, or to the Palestinian territories to give moral and financial support to fellow Muslims, the report said.

"The enthusiasm for Syria is directly linked to predictions that the final battle at the end of time will take place in Sham, the region sometimes called Greater Syria, or the Levant, encompassing Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine" the report added.
This notion has attracted Indonesians from different extremist streams to go or try to go to Syria, including the Jemaah Islamiyah, or JI, a group responsible for the 2002 bombings on the resort island of Bali which killed 202 people, mostly foreigners.

The report quoted the Indonesian foreign ministry as estimating there were 50 Indonesians among the 8,000 foreign fighters from 74 countries involved in the Syrian conflict.
In January, after counter-terrorism police killed six members of the militant group Western Indonesia Mujahideen, authorities announced that one of those killed had planned to go to Syria.

Testimony from a surviving member of the group said all six had planned to go to Syria and had robbed a bank to finance the trip and that a member of the group was already in Syria to assist upon their arrival, the report said.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team