Expert urges SE Asia to close terror camps

Rohan Gunaratna, head of the political violence and terrorism centre at Singapore's Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, said Indonesia must ban JI as an organisation and oppose moves to free the group's spiritual leader, Abu Bakar Bashir, in June."Everything must be done to make sure that he is not released," Gunaratna told reporters on the sidelines of a counter-terrorism forum in the central Philippines.

"JI has gained very significant strength because it is now working with so many other groups in Indonesia. The Indonesian government must be encouraged to ban JI," he said.

"JI is still a legal organisation in Indonesia. JI must be criminalized," he added.

He warned that JI, al-Qaeda's franchise in Southeast Asia, continued to pose a serious threat despite the arrests of senior leaders such as Bashir and Isamuddin Riduan, alias Hambali.

Noordin Mohammad Top, a Malaysian suspected of masterminding bombings on the Indonesian holiday island of Bali last year, is believed to have taken over JI's operational leadership.

It has a few thousand members around Southeast Asia, including less than 100 in the southern Philippines.

Citing intelligence reports, Gunaratna said JI had training camps in Indonesia and the southern Philippines, producing 400 to 500 potential terrorists every year.

Gunaratna, who has written books on al-Qaeda and JI, said Southeast Asian states -- particularly the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia -- must cooperate more to defeat terrorism.

Those links should include common data bases, an exchange of personnel and joint training and operations, he said, describing these activities as "a new format for fighting terrorism."

The United States, Australia and Europe should support the region's counter-terrorism efforts because they have the resources and intelligence networks to check movements of people and funds, Gunaratna said.