Generous Indonesians donating their spare change to the poor and needy are unwittingly helping finance deadly terror attacks and militant training camps, in a scam that has netted big money for extremist groups.
Former radical Khairul Ghazali once spent his days visiting restaurants, convenience stores and supermarkets to drop off charity boxes, wearing an official-looking uniform to avoid suspicion.
Passers-by would slot in coins and crumpled banknotes in the belief that they were helping the impoverished, orphaned children or maybe a Palestinian aid organization.
Photo: AFP
Yet Ghazali’s boxes secretly belonged to Jemaah Islamiyah — the notorious network behind Indonesia’s deadliest terror attack, the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings.
“People can’t tell the difference between these and other charity boxes,” said Ghazali, 56, who now runs an Islamic boarding school and tries to de-radicalise former extremists.
“The money collected is usually used to pay for terrorism,” he said.
With little outside funding, hardline Islamist groups depend on the charity box scam to pay for operations across Indonesia, the world’s biggest Muslim-majority nation, which has suffered a series of hotel bombings and other attacks over the years.
North Sumatra police in March said that they had seized more than 500 boxes suspected to be funding pipelines for the Islamic State group and radicals linked to al-Qaeda.
The seizure, weeks before an Islamic State-inspired married couple blew themselves up at a church on Good Friday, was the tip of the iceberg.
A Jemaah Islamiyah militant arrested last year admitted that one foundation linked to the notorious terror group was running more than 20,000 boxes nationwide, police said at the time.
There are no official figures on the number of illicit charity boxes around Indonesia, but experts believe they are in every city and region across the sprawling Southeast Asian archipelago.
“This is not new but the scale of it, which is now massive, is something new,” Jakarta-based security analyst Sidney Jones said.
Most Indonesian terror groups now rely “overwhelmingly” on domestic funding to pay for day-to-day operations, she said.
Terror groups have also raised cash from member and sympathizer donations, online fundraising and laundering money through legitimate businesses, such as Indonesia’s many palm oil plantations.
“But the attacks that have happened after the Bali Bombing have been mainly funded through charity box funds,” Ghazali said.
Funds from the scam have been traced to militant training camps in ultra-conservative Aceh province and the East Indonesia Mujahideen, a radical group blamed for beheading four Christian farmers on the island of Sulawesi last month.
They are also used to help families of radicals jailed or killed by Indonesia’s counter-terror squad, and police suspect they have been used to pay for jihadist trips to Syria.
It has proved a dependable way for extremists to raise funds under the radar with one box raising about US$350 every six months or so, Ghazali said.
The scheme’s success also means that extremists are likely to keep manipulating the goodwill of Indonesians, who are among the world’s most generous in terms of charitable giving.
“Indonesians like to donate money and they’ll give away 2,000 or 5,000 rupiah [US$0.14 to US$0.34] without thinking twice, but it can be a dangerous habit, because you don’t know how the money is being used,” said Sofyan Tsauri, a former militant familiar with the scheme.
BACKLASH: The National Party quit its decades-long partnership with the Liberal Party after their election loss to center-left Labor, which won a historic third term Australia’s National Party has split from its conservative coalition partner of more than 60 years, the Liberal Party, citing policy differences over renewable energy and after a resounding loss at a national election this month. “Its time to have a break,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told reporters yesterday. The split shows the pressure on Australia’s conservative parties after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor party won a historic second term in the May 3 election, powered by a voter backlash against US President Donald Trump’s policies. Under the long-standing partnership in state and federal politics, the Liberal and National coalition had shared power
CONTROVERSY: During the performance of Israel’s entrant Yuval Raphael’s song ‘New Day Will Rise,’ loud whistles were heard and two people tried to get on stage Austria’s JJ yesterday won the Eurovision Song Contest, with his operatic song Wasted Love triumphing at the world’s biggest live music television event. After votes from national juries around Europe and viewers from across the continent and beyond, JJ gave Austria its first victory since bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst’s 2014 triumph. After the nail-biting drama as the votes were revealed running into yesterday morning, Austria finished with 436 points, ahead of Israel — whose participation drew protests — on 357 and Estonia on 356. “Thank you to you, Europe, for making my dreams come true,” 24-year-old countertenor JJ, whose
A documentary whose main subject, 25-year-old photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza weeks before it premiered at Cannes stunned viewers into silence at the festival on Thursday. As the cinema lights came back on, filmmaker Sepideh Farsi held up an image of the young Palestinian woman killed with younger siblings on April 16, and encouraged the audience to stand up and clap to pay tribute. “To kill a child, to kill a photographer is unacceptable,” Farsi said. “There are still children to save. It must be done fast,” the exiled Iranian filmmaker added. With Israel
Africa has established the continent’s first space agency to boost Earth observation and data sharing at a time when a more hostile global context is limiting the availability of climate and weather information. The African Space Agency opened its doors last month under the umbrella of the African Union and is headquartered in Cairo. The new organization, which is still being set up and hiring people in key positions, is to coordinate existing national space programs. It aims to improve the continent’s space infrastructure by launching satellites, setting up weather stations and making sure data can be shared across
RSS