Terrorism expert: Books by Bali bombers on sale despite crackdown

Jakarta - Indonesia tried to stop books written by three executed Bali bombers from being published but they made it to print in limited copies, a terrorism expert said Wednesday.

Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, Imam Samudra and Ali Ghufran, also known as Mukhlas, wrote the books called The Martyrs Trilogy in prison while they were awaiting execution for the October 2002 bombings.

Sidney Jones, adviser to the International Crisis Group think tank, said there was competition among radical publishing houses for their works before their executions last year.

"For the first time that I recall, the Indonesian government actually took a lot of steps to try to ensure that these, first, didn't get published and then didn't reach a wide audience," Jones told foreign correspondents.

Jones said the books had been ready for publication in December but the state intelligence organization intervened to prevent them from being printed.

The books finally made it to print and were sold at an Islamic book fair in Jakarta last week but were not prominently displayed, she said.

"The point is that for the first time there is actually real attention on the part of the Indonesian government to what's published and how it's distributed," she said.

The 2002 Bali bombings killed 202 people, mostly foreigners.

The attacks and a series of other bombings in Indonesia since 2000 have been blamed on the Jemaah Islamiyah militant group, which seeks Islamic rule across much of South-East Asia.

The International Crisis Group said in a report last year that a network of printers, translators, designers, marketers and distributing agents was one of many webs binding Jemaah Islamiyah.

Publishing also provides a meeting ground between leading figures in the Jemaah Islamiyah mainstream, opposed to al-Qaeda-style bombings on Indonesian soil, and a few men more associated with the group's violent faction, the think tank said.

"These publishing houses should not be closed down or their books banned," the report said.

"But by enforcing existing laws on labour, trade, publishing and taxation, the government could exert closer scrutiny than it is doing now and gain valuable information at the same time," it said. (dpa)

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