JAKARTA: Indonesia has sent five special counterterrorism agents to the Philippines on Tuesday to investigate the two Indonesians arrested last week in connection with the siege of Marawi by the Daesh-backed Maute group.
Indonesian National Police spokesman Inspector General Setyo Wasisto said the five-member delegation from Densus 88, the counterterrorism squad, will coordinate with its Philippine counterparts to seek access to Muhammad Ilham Syahputra, the Indonesian militant who fought alongside the Maute group in Marawi and was arrested on Nov. 1, and Minhati Madrais, the wife of slain Maute group leader Omarkhayam Maute who was arrested on Sunday in Iligan city, northern Mindanao.
“We want to gain more information from them regarding their roles, especially Ilham Syahputra. He was reported dead in May but now, apparently, he is still alive,” Wasisto told Arab News.
Lalu Muhammad Iqbal, the director for protection of Indonesian nationals abroad, said representatives from the Indonesian Embassy in Manila had been granted access to Syahputra and were verifying his nationality using a biometric facial recognition system.
“It’s going to take a while to verify. We can’t identify him using his fingerprints as the skin on his fingertips is damaged,” Iqbal told Arab News.
He said that Jakarta received information from Manila earlier this year that a passport bearing Syahputra’s identity was found next to a militant’s body which led to the belief that he was dead.
“According to the Philippines authority, he entered the Philippines in January but never left. So it is unlikely that he would have a new identity or a new passport, otherwise he would have been recorded to have applied for a new one in our embassy,” Iqbal said.
He added that embassy officials had also been granted access to Madrais and were checking if she had applied for Philippines citizenship since her Indonesian passport expired in January.
The siege of Marawi ended when leaders Isnilon Hapilon and Omarkhayam Maute were shot dead as troops launched an assault to rescue hostages.
Wasisto said the police, Indonesia’s National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) and the immigration office were continuing to monitor the possible returns of Indonesians who fought alongside Daesh in Iraq and Syria, and with the Maute group in the Philippines.
He said the authorities maintained a watchlist of individuals who went to Syria or the Philippines and were suspected to have fought as foreign militants there.
“The problem is that we can’t prosecute them with our counterterrorism law, since it lacks the provisions to criminalize those who act and support terrorism acitivities abroad. Maybe, though, we can still prosecute them under other laws,” Wasisto said.
Lawmakers are in the process of amending the law and a proposed provision has been debated which would strip those who commit terror acts abroad of their Indonesian citizenship.
Irfan Idris, a senior official in charge of the deradicalization program at BNPT, told Arab News that those returnees would be ”enrolled in a socialization program.”
In September, the BNPT released a 12-minute video featuring testimonies of eight Indonesians, out of 18, who returned from Syria after escaping Daesh in June. In the video, the returnees recount their horror and disappointment during their stay in Raqqa for two years, which they said was a stark contrast to the promises they had been made.
“We continue to receive information from various channels about the movement of Indonesian nationals in Syria,” Iqbal said. “We have not had new returnees from Turkey for some time and we haven’t received information of an outflux of Indonesians from Raqqa lately.”
Indonesian counterterrorism agents to investigate Marawi siege suspects
Indonesian counterterrorism agents to investigate Marawi siege suspects
UK pays Guantanamo detainee ‘substantial’ compensation over US torture questions
- Abu Zubaydah has been held at Guantanamo Bay without charge for 20 years
- British security services knew he was subjected to ‘enhanced interrogation’ but failed to raise concerns for 4 years
LONDON: A Saudi-born Palestinian being held without trial by the US has received a “substantial” compensation payment from the UK government, the BBC reported.
Abu Zubaydah has been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for almost 20 years following his capture in Pakistan in 2002, and was subjected to “enhanced interrogation” techniques by the CIA.
He was accused of being a senior member of Al-Qaeda in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the US. The allegations were later dropped but he remains in detention.
The compensation follows revelations that UK security services submitted questions to the US to be put to Abu Zubaydah by their US counterparts despite knowledge of his mistreatment.
He alleged that MI5 and MI6 had been “complicit” in torture, leading to a legal case and the subsequent compensation.
Dominic Grieve, the UK’s former attorney general, chaired a panel reviewing Abu Zubaydah’s case.
He described the compensation as “very unusual” but said the treatment of Abu Zubaydah had been “plainly” wrong, the BBC reported.
Grieve added that the security services had evidence that the “Americans were behaving in a way that should have given us cause for real concern,” and that “we (UK authorities) should have raised it with the US and, if necessary, closed down co-operation, but we failed to do that for a considerable period of time.”
Abu Zubaydah’s international legal counsel, Prof. Helen Duffy, said: “The compensation is important, it’s significant, but it’s insufficient.”
She added that more needs to be done to secure his release, stating: “These violations of his rights are not historic, they are ongoing.”
Duffy said Abu Zubaydah would continue to fight for his freedom, adding: “I am hopeful that the payment of the substantial sums will enable him to do that and to support himself when he’s in the outside world.”
He is one of 15 people still being held at Guantanamo, many without charge. Following his initial detention, he arrived at the prison camp having been the first person to be taken to a so-called CIA “black site.”
He spent time at six such locations, including in Lithuania and Poland, outside of US legal jurisdiction.
Internal MI6 messages revealed that the “enhanced interrogation” techniques he was subjected to would have “broken” the resolve of an estimated 98 percent of US special forces members had they been subjected to them.
CIA officers later decided he would be permanently cut off from the outside world, with then-President George W. Bush publicly saying Abu Zubaydah had been “plotting and planning murder.”
However, the US has since withdrawn the allegations and no longer says he was a member of Al-Qaeda.
A report by the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said Abu Zubaydah had been waterboarded at least 83 times, was locked in a coffin-like box for extended periods, and had been regularly assaulted. Much of his treatment would be considered torture under UK law.
Despite knowledge of his treatment, it was four years before British security services raised concerns with their American counterparts, and their submission of questions within that period had “created a market” for the torture of detainees, Duffy said.
A 2018 report by the UK Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee was deeply critical of the behavior of MI5 and MI6 in relation to Abu Zubaydah.
It also criticized conduct relating to Guantanamo detainee Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, widely regarded as a key architect of the Sept. 11 attacks, warning that the precedent set by Abu Zubaydah’s legal action could be used by Mohammed to bring a separate case against the UK.
MI5 and MI6 failed to comment on Abu Zubaydah’s case. Neither the UK government nor Mohammed’s legal team would comment on a possible case over his treatment.
