Police work, not bounty, crucial to tracing Mas Selamat Rewards for tip-offs on terror suspects rarely lead to capture, say analysts
By Salim Osman, Indonesia Correspondent http://www.straitstimes.com/Free/Story/STIStory_260330.html JAKARTA - THE $1 million reward for information about escaped terrorist Mas Selamat Kastari is unlikely to help catch him if he has made it to Indonesia, police and analysts say. They point out that while 300 terrorism suspects have been rounded up by Indonesian police in the last three years, they were all caught through police work and foreign intelligence, rather than tip-offs from people seeking rewards. Singaporean Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng on Monday announced that two businessmen had put up the bounty in the hope that it would lead to the arrest of Mas Selamat, who escaped from the Whitley Road Detention Centre five months ago. At the same time, he said that while there was no intelligence suggesting the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) leader was in Indonesia, the possibility could not be dismissed. But Indonesian police chief Sutanto yesterday spoke about the difficulty of tracking down terrorists in a large country like Indonesia, saying that the only hope was intensive police work. 'Terrorists hide, and change their names so that the public won't know what they are up to. Terrorists typically have four to five aliases,' he said after a Cabinet meeting at the Istana. And while Indonesian police have previously offered bounties for help in arresting terrorists, analyst Ikrar Nusa Bhakti of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences said: 'I've never heard of anyone receiving a reward after giving information to police.' He explained: 'It's just not easy to recognise somebody's altered face. Detectives, police officers may be able to do it, but not ordinary people.' And even if Mas Selamat is in Indonesia and members of the public do know where he is, analysts say many Muslim Indonesians are reluctant to act as informers against terror suspects. They say the resistance to coming forward stems partly from a reluctance to betray fellow Muslims, and partly from fears for their own security, as the terrorists are believed to have their own network of spies. To illustrate the likely futility of offering a reward, security consultant Ken Conboy pointed out that Indonesian police placed billion-rupiah (S$147,000) bounties on Malaysian terrorists Azahari Husin and Noordin Top following the 2004 bomb attack on the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. The police did receive some information from the public about the suspects but no strong leads. To this day, Noordin remains at large and is believed to be in Sumatra, although Azahari was tracked down to a safe house in Malang, East Java, where he died in a police raid in 2005. 'However, the big crack on Azahari's hideout was based on the police's own investigation, plus intelligence work with their foreign counterparts,' said Mr Conboy, author of two books on the JI. He noted that Indonesian police had put a price on the heads of other terrorists like Dulmatin, Umar Patek and Zulkarnaen, who are nevertheless still on the loose. 'It doesn't seem to help in Indonesia, unlike in places like Pakistan where such rewards led to the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohamed,' he said, referring to the Sept 11 mastermind. Meanwhile, in the case of Mas Selamat, chances of the reward inspiring anyone to come forward are further reduced because of the lack of Indonesian media coverage. Only two newspapers - Koran Tempo and the Jakarta Post - carried the news, both on their inside pages, with the Post running just a four-paragraph brief. But despite the apparent odds against the million-dollar lure helping to catch Mas Selamat if he is in Indonesia, police remain hopeful that someone will come forward with a tip-off. A spokesman said: 'Even today, we still have not received any information on his whereabouts. 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