On the move Detachment 88 cadets undergo a drill to rescue hostages at the academy in Semarang on Indonesia's main island of Java
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Detachment 88's biggest conversion to date is that of Nasir Abbas, an Afghan-trained former JI senior commander who gave weapons training to several future bombers. When he was caught in 2003, the Malaysian-born militant busted his best kung fu moves to get the police to kill him, lest he suffer the indignity of being captured by infidels. He broke the leg of one police officer and the arm of another, but the authorities still didn't shoot. He was too valuable a source to kill.
At first, Nasir answered all interrogation questions with one phrase: "God forgive me." Then Bekto Suprapto, now an ex-head of Detachment 88, strode into his cell and delivered a rapid-fire biography of the militant. Nasir was intrigued by this man who seemed to know everything about him, including his disagreement with JI's turn toward killing innocent civilians. He asked if Bekto would be willing to meet him one-on-one. The police chief agreed, even removing Nasir's handcuffs while they talked for days. "I thought, I could kill this old man if I wanted, but he gave me trust and I couldn't abuse that," recalls Nasir. "In Islam, if someone respects you, you must respect them back." Today, Nasir, who served just 10 months in jail for immigration violations, advises Detachment 88 officers on how to catch his former charges and preaches to terrorism suspects that killing innocent people in the name of Islam is wrong.
Training Days
The pair of fruit-laden trucks rumbling past the rice paddies of Semarang, central Java, illustrate the spectrum of religiosity in Indonesia's heartland: one vehicle is decorated with a mural of Osama bin Laden wielding an AK-47, while the other is emblazoned with a voluptuous woman in an extreme state of undress. It is near here that some of Indonesia's most radical clerics spout their hate-filled sermons. It is also where, on a rambling campus complete with mosque and church, Detachment 88 cadets undergo part of their counterterror training. (Antiterror units from other nations like Pakistan and Thailand take classes there too.) The police academy feels like an oversized playground. An airplane sits ready for training exercises in which black-clad officers scale up the fuselage like so many ants. A model hotel and train allow agents to engage in close-quarter combat drills, while an Olympic-sized pool gives scuba-clad cadets a chance to practice water infiltration techniques. State-of-the-art forensic and computer laboratories also encourage indoor education.
On one scorching day in April, two dozen Detachment 88 cadets toting M4A1 assault rifles crouch in formation near their target. After a quick prayer session, they breach a wall and shimmy toward a house where a hostage is supposedly being held. Officers attach explosives to the door and then lob flash grenades inside. Police snipers man the perimeter. The training exercise goes well, but reality is far more dangerous. Just weeks after completing training, one Detachment 88 officer was charged with tackling a militant wearing an explosives-rigged vest. He survived, but more than a dozen police have died in other sieges. "Of course I was scared," says one 30-year-old agent who last year participated in a raid against a terrorist who worked undercover as a florist at the Jakarta Ritz-Carlton Hotel, which was bombed last July. "But my job as a policeman, as a Muslim, as an Indonesian, is to capture people who distort Islam and use it to kill."
The difficulty for any counterterrorism force is that even as one cell is smashed, new Hydra heads can regenerate with ever-changing plans of attack. The recent spate of arrests in Indonesia can be viewed as a law-enforcement success — or as a cautionary tale of how quickly jihadis can proliferate in remote parts of the archipelago. Although Detachment 88's record in getting extremists to cooperate through savvy interrogations and prison perks is impressive, jails have become breeding grounds for terror. One prison guard in Bali was even swayed by a death-row terrorist to smuggle in a laptop to raise funds for another attack. Two militants tied to last year's Jakarta twin hotel bombings, which killed seven people, had earlier participated in Detachment 88's deradicalization program. "We must give credit to Detachment 88 for their successes in disrupting Indonesia's terror network," says Huda of the Institute of International Peace Building. "But they try to do everything: preventing terrorists, catching terrorists, deradicalizing terrorists. One unit can't do it all."
Huda is particularly concerned about what happens to terrorists once they are released from jail. Some may be involved in ad hoc Detachment 88 projects to give former inmates jobs, but there's no comprehensive strategy to track released prisoners. Huda has a unique insight into the terrorists' minds. For six years, he attended the infamous Al Mukmin Ngruki Islamic boarding school in central Java that educated more than 20 Indonesian terrorist recruits. To prevent recidivism, Huda has arranged employment for 10 convicted terrorists. "Most of these guys aren't poor and can get jobs on their own," he says. "But what I want to do is pair them with moderate people who can influence their thinking."
One of Huda's charges is Harry Setya Rahmadi, a charismatic university economics graduate who was jailed in 2006 for sheltering Noordin Mohammed Top, the Malaysian jihadi who was killed in a police shoot-out last September after having orchestrated five major anti-Western attacks on Indonesian soil. "I knew that if I cooperated with Detachment 88, I would be treated well in jail," says Harry, who was released early and now juggles two jobs, managing a prawn farm and trading foreign exchange online.
The War Goes On
Another of Huda's ex-prisoners elicits more concern. Yusuf Adirima first learned about jihad from a video about the war in Bosnia. He ended up at Camp Hudaibiyah, a JI-run training base in the southern Philippines where Nasir once taught. Yusuf fought for two years with one of the local Muslim insurgent groups. "I lived in the jungle and killed many Filipino soldiers," he says. After returning to Indonesia, he reunited with other Camp Hudaibiyah veterans but was arrested in 2003 in connection to a massive arms cache in Semarang.
In jail, for whatever reason, Yusuf received no visits from the newly formed Detachment 88, no special prison perks. The first two years of his internment were spent in solitary confinement in a darkened room. After Yusuf's release last year, Huda got him a job at a barbecued-duck restaurant. But he worries about this man with the tight-set jaw and alert eyes. Yusuf shows no repentance for his past life. He recently named his new daughter Armalita, after a favored assault rifle. One evening, after finishing his night shift, Yusuf sits back to read a book on jihad in the southern Philippines, pointing out diagrams of his favorite weapons. "I would like to go fight again," he says, the only time he looks a female American journalist squarely in the eye. "That is my passion." Detachment 88's work is never done. — with reporting by Jason Tedjasukmana / Jakarta