Medan, Indonesia – Ali Imron, one of the bombers of the Indonesian island of Bali in 2002, says that the first time he saw the World Trade Center (WTC) and Pentagon attacks on September 11, 2001, was on the front page of a local newspaper.
“Our family didn’t have a TV at the time,” Imron told Al Jazeera. The 52-year-old player has been sentenced to life in prison for his involvement in a bomb blast in Bali that killed more than 200 people, many of them foreign nationals. “But I just thought this was ‘jihad’ from our friends.”
Twenty years ago, Imron was a member of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), a strong organization founded in 1993 in Indonesia, which still has more than 1,600 members according to Indonesian officials. JI was linked to al-Qaeda, which it said was responsible September 11 and under the direction of Osama bin Laden.
The 9/11 attack, when al-Qaeda members hijacked four commercial planes and dropped them off at the World Trade Center and Pentagon, is evident around the world.
More than 2,500 people from 90 countries have been killed and investigators say the event had a significant impact on the establishment of violent networks in Southeast Asia, some of which were already working with al-Qaeda.
“9/11 came at a time when Abdullah Sungkar, founder of Jemaah Islamiyah, the largest military force in the region, had died two years ago and [its spiritual leader] Abu Bakar Bashir was allowing [Jemaah Islamiyah’s military commander] Hambali allies with al-Qaeda in anti-white supremacy. But this divided Jemaah Islamiyah, because it contradicted Sungkar’s approach to volunteering to end Soeharto’s rule, “Quinton Temby, an assistant professor of public law at Monash University, Indonesia, told Al Jazeera.
“Jemaah Islamiyah was not in the alliance, especially the alliance with al-Qaeda. But he was an important al-Qaeda ally in promoting international jihad. Jemaah Islamiyah assisted other 9/11 airlines in Malaysia,” he said.
Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, who were on a plane that crashed in the Pentagon, passed through Malaysia en route to the United States. He is believed to have met with JI officials in Indonesia including Encep Nurjaman called Hambali who is now facing army at Guantanamo Bay on a terrorist charge after serving 18 years in prison in the US.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report released in 2014, also known as the “Torture Report”, also alleged that Hambali had transferred money to French citizen Zacarias Moussaoui to register a US aviation school to train as a pilot before 9/11. Moussaoui He was later sentenced to life in prison in August 2001 and pleaded guilty to murdering U.S. citizens on September 11.
“The small number of Southeast Asian troops working alongside al-Qaeda was encouraged by 9/11, but few knew about the plot in advance and many were surprised by its ‘success’,” Temby said.
In the years that followed, JI and al-Qaeda members continued to support each other, Temby added, with al-Qaeda funding attacks on Southeast Asia such as the Bali bombing.
‘Change’
While Imron was one of the members of Jemaah Islamiyah who said he was unaware of the 9/11 plans, he told Al Jazeera that the group was encouraged by the threats, even to the point of planning to bomb Bali in Bali as a form of “tax”.
“I still remember it,” he said. “Imam Samudra wanted to detonate a bomb in Bali on September 11 to commemorate the commemoration day at the World Trade Center, but there was not enough time.”
A bomb blast finally took place on October 12 as the attackers fired on Kuta’s barricades.
Imron added that the original plan was to launch a naval attack on the Singapore port, but turned to Bali after seeing the magnitude of 9/11. Officials like Hambali also supported the controversial statements from Bin Laden that sought to justify the killing of civilians as well as military motives.
Imron says he and other members of his team exhibited WTC threat scenes as well as video messages from the perpetrators, which were released online and widely distributed, to the bombers who bombed the clothes at Sari Club and Paddy’s Pub.
“We played the video a few days before the Bali bombing,” Imron told Al Jazeera. “The bombers were not intimidated, but the videos that attacked the people on 9/11 encouraged them.”
Imam Samudra, a senior member of JI, and two of Imron’s brothers, Mukhlas and Amrozi, were killed in Indonesia in 2009 for their role in raising threats in Bali. Imron spent the rest of his life in prison after apologizing and apologizing for his case.
Noor Huda Ismail, a former member of the Darul Islamist group, told Al Jazeera 20 years before September 11, that Bali’s terrorists had changed his life once he found out who shared a room with him. had.
Mubarok bomb maker, who shares a room with Ismail at an Islamic school, made some of the explosives and was sentenced to life in prison along with Imron in 2003.
Ismail, who is said to have wondered how his former resident friend would have chosen the path he had set up, set up the Institute for International Peace Building and run programs and negotiations in Indonesia and monitored group threats throughout the region.
“The threats of September 11 have strongly influenced global security reforms in Southeast Asia,” he said.
Ismail says that over the past 20 years groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS) have set up their own networks against local conflicts and have secretly acted in various countries in Southeast Asia, asking local voters to achieve their goals. “shown on 9/11.
According to Judith Jacob, senior researcher at Protection Group International, it is important to look back and forth in order to understand the magnitude of the event.
Even before 9/11, JI was making threats.
On September 14, 2000, the group detonated a commodity bomb on the Jakarta Stock Exchange and killed 15 people.
There were also violence in the Philippines such as the Rizal Day protests on December 30, 2000, in which 22 people were killed, in- volved in a bomb blast in Manila, frequent clashes with security forces in the south, market bombings and kidnappings.
In April 2000, Abu Sayyaf, a former bandit, arrested 21 people on the Malaysian island of Sipadan – half of foreign tourists – and held them hostage in Jolo, Philippines, causing a months-long crisis.
Jolo is one of the most dangerous places in the area and Abu Sayyaf has now merged with ISIL.
“September 11 was a great encouragement to the Southeast Asian military because of the devastation and danger of the bombing,” said Jacob. “But he didn’t need to be encouraged.”