http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/jakarta-bomb-trial-opens-as-militants-arrested-in-aceh/360414
February 23, 2010 Jakarta Globe Islamic militant Mohammad Jibriel Abdul Rahman behind bars at the court detention center on Tuesday. He faces a 15-year sentence on charges of financing the Jakarta hotel bombings last year. (JG Photo/Afriadi Hikmal) Jakarta Bomb Trial Opens as Militants Arrested in Aceh The trial of a terror suspect believed to be involved in the hotel bombings in Jakarta on July 17 opened on Tuesday morning, just a few hours after four men with suspected links to the shadowy regional terror group Jemaah Islamiyah were arrested in a mountainous area in Aceh. See Also: 4 Suspected JI-Linked Militants Arrested in Aceh Noordin May Have Been Plotting Attack to Rival 9/11 At the South Jakarta District Court, prosecutors reading the indictment against Muhammad Jibriel Abdul Rahman, 25, said the defendant sent an e-mail to his brother in Saudi Arabia saying he had met a man seeking $100 million in cash to finance an attack that would be "the biggest after WTC." Prosecutors believe the man to have been terror mastermind Noordin M Top. Prosecutors said they could not confirm if WTC referred to New York's World Trade Center, which was brought down in the 2001 terrorist attack. "We just put the plain content of the e-mail in our indictment," prosecutor Totok Bambang told the Jakarta Globe. "Of course we will ask the defendant what he meant by 'biggest after WTC' in future hearings." Although it is unknown whether Jibriel secured any funding in his trip to Saudi Arabia in 2008, prosecutors charged him with "hiding information about the acts of terror that resulted in the bomb explosions at the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels," as well as document forgery. As the revelations in the Jakarta courtroom indicated that terrorists may have been planning a bigger attack than the one that took place, developments in Aceh confirmed that the threat of terrorism in the country remained despite the death of key terror leader Noordin last year. Aceh Police Chief Insp. Gen. Aditya Warman said the four men were arrested in an area believed to be a shooting range for their unidentified militant group. The arrest triggered the deployment of more than 100 officers to hunt 50 more suspected members hiding in the province's forests, including an Afghan national. A high-ranking National Police official told the Globe on condition of anonymity that police "strongly suspected the group has links with Jemaah Islamiyah or even Al Qaeda." The developments came as Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd unveiled a counter-extremism white paper in Sydney on Tuesday and said his country planned to fingerprint and face-scan visitors from 10 high-risk countries to combat terrorism. Although Australian officials said they would delay naming the countries, the BBC reported that the white paper stated that despite Indonesia's recent success against terrorism, the Jakarta hotel bombings pointed "to an ongoing threat there." Noor Huda Ismail, executive director of the International Institute for Peacebuilding, said Indonesia was likely to be one of the 10 countries. "It's simple to see," he said. "A few terrorist attacks happened in Indonesia in the past years and most of the victims were Australians." A total of 95 Australians have been killed in terrorist attacks in Indonesia since the October 2002 bombings in Bali, in which 88 Australians lost their lives. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
