JAKARTA BOMBING

In due course, I suppose the people who planned and executed the bombing of the hotels in Jakarta will be either be identified or claim responsibility.

Clearly, by targeting international hotels they were intending to harm international visitors, and it is not surprising that Australians and New Zealanders have been killed and injured. In that sense, it is personal. The people responsible for the bombing must feel that we have caused them harm. I just wish they would tell us what their grievances are rather than take such an extreme action.

It will probably turn out those who have organized this horrific action against their fellow human beings will claim to be strongly religious. As far as I know Islam teaches compassion and peace, and right conduct in the pursuit of war. Al Jazeera reports:

No one has yet claimed responsibility for Friday’s blasts, in which devices packed with nails, ball-bearings, nuts and bolts were used.

However, suspicion has fallen on the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) group and its allies.

Sidney Jones, of the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera that one of the prime suspects “has to be Noordin [Mohammed] Top”, the Malaysian-born leader of a splinter JI group.

“The police were actively looking for him just last week in a town in central Java where they found explosives similar to those used in the hotels [attacks],” she said.
“They have been close on the trail of some of these people in the past and I am sure we will see a wave of arrests in the aftermath of this bombing.”

Ansyaad Mbai, Indonesia’s security ministry’s anti-terror desk chief, confirmed that there was evidence that Top was behind the attacks.

“There are strong indications that Noordin Top’s group is behind the attacks because the bombs were hand-made and the tactic was suicide bombings,” he told the AFP news agency.

They were also the same as devices discovered at an Islamic boarding school in central Java last week during a raid on Noordin’s suspected hideout, Mbai said.

Noordin’s Indonesian wife was reportedly arrested in the raid.

“I can’t say the attacks yesterday were an act of retaliation for the recent arrests, but I can say that the police are getting very close to capturing Noordin,” Mbai said

Thus it would seem that the attack is an act of vengeance with a view to damage the Indonesian economy following the successful presidential election. Seen in this light, the bombing would appear to be “criminal” without any religious or social justification. I note that using drones to attack and kill civilians is similarly “criminal”.

We need rules that effectively cover these behaviors, so that the exercise of one transgression cannot be used as a justification for another. I do not understand people who are ideologically opposed to international law.