Quotes of the Day

Perhaps the most encouraging development of detained Muslim cleric and alleged Jemaah Islamiah (JI) leader Abubakar Ba'asyir's first day in court last Wednesday was what happened outside of it: nothing. Only a handful of curious passersby peeked into the Bureau of Meteorology and Geophysics in North Jakarta, where the proceedings are being held. Security was conspicuously light; police were armed only with batons. Abubakar, who maintains his innocence, sat impassively as prosecutors read out the four charges against him: treason, plotting to assassinate the President and two immigration violations.

Just last year, the detention and trial of a fundamentalist leader like Abubakar would have been cause for mass protests and clashes between security forces and Islamic radicals. It was fear of that Muslim backlash that had kept President Megawati Sukarnoputri from arresting Abubakar before the Bali bombings, despite repeated requests from Singaporean and Malaysian authorities. The gruesome toll of those strikes last October, as well as nifty police work that has netted 47 suspected terrorists, appears to have convinced most Indonesians to shun radical Islam.

Reinforcing that view were the arrests of 18 alleged JI operatives over the previous two weeks and the seizure of bomb-making materials and automatic weapons. Several top JI figures were among the detainees, investigators said, including Abu Rusdan, JI's current Amir, or supreme leader.

Police reports seen by TIME lay out some of the successful investigative methods Indonesian police have employed in tracking and collaring members of the group. Many of the JI arrests police have made since Bali were made possible by mobile-phone tracking technology — a vulnerability JI senior leaders warned of on April 7, one suspect told interrogators, when members were told to "strictly limit the use of their cell phones." The JI leadership apparently couldn't take its own advice, allowing Indonesian police to begin a rolling series of arrests by leapfrogging from one suspect to another through logged calls and address books stored in seized mobiles. "These guys just can't keep their mouths shut," said one source close to the investigation. "They keep calling and SMSing each other. It's like giving us an address book and a road map."

Does the change in public attitudes and the ongoing police crackdown mean JI is finished? By no means, warns one senior U.S. official. "They've taken another body blow with these latest arrests. But we can't afford to be complacent. We still don't know what capacity they've got out there." His warning was echoed by Indonesian police and, on Thursday morning, underscored by a pipe-bomb explosion outside the United Nations' Jakarta headquarters. No one claimed responsibility for the blast, but one senior security official with a large Western conglomerate offered a disturbing theory: "It's a little reminder from JI: 'We may be down now, but we'll be back.'"

• Simon Elegant
• Jemaah Islamiah leader Abubakar Ba'asyir's has his (uneventful) day in court