“Ismarwan found it difficult to refuse his former comrades when he was asked to loan them his land. The paramilitary training is believed to have taken place for only a short period of time,” said his friend Yudi Zulfahri, who trained with him at the Aceh camp in 2010.

CRITICAL TASK

Ismarwan’s second arrest highlights the difficulties Indonesia faces in rehabilitating and deradicalising those convicted of militancy – a task that has become critical as a significant number of Isis members are scheduled to be released from prison this month after completing their sentences.

The Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC) warned in an August 2018 report that a “cluster of [Isis] members are among 144 prisoners” who have either been released since January 2017 or are completing their sentences by December 2019.

“[These] prisoners include the first significant cluster of individuals with Syria links to have completed prison sentences,” IPAC director Sidney Jones said in the report.

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Jones also warned that ex-prisoners are seen as “desirable” people to be appointed JAD leaders, as they are deemed to have “proven themselves” through the acts of terrorism that got them convicted in the first place.

Imprisoned militants who resist the pressure to cooperate with authorities and hold firm to their ideological principles are seen to have passed a test of commitment, the IPAC director wrote in an October 2018 report: “This means the government needs to pay close attention to the releases and planned releases of pro-Isis prisoners, because that is the pool from which the next JAD leader is likely to be chosen.”

The recent London Bridge attack, in which convicted militant Usman Khan killed two people while attending a prison rehabilitation event, is a stark reminder of the threat posed by freed militants who have not disengaged from violent ideologies.

RECIDIVISM

Since 2009, Indonesia has had “more than 70 cases” of recidivism among those convicted of militancy, said Solahudin, a researcher from the University of Indonesia’s Centre for Terrorism and Social Conflict.

“Some of [the released convicts] went to Syria, some were involved in terror cases,” he said, adding that more than 30 criminal convicts were later convicted of terror-related offences over the same time frame.

In January 2016, five militants attacked a Starbucks and a police post in downtown Jakarta in a series of shootings and bombings. Two of the five attackers had previously been convicted of militancy.

Yudi Zulfahri, who trained with Ismarwan in Aceh, and runs a deradicalisation organisation called Establish Peace believes Ismarwan’s arrest for a second time exposes the limitations of the BNPT deradicalisation programme.

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“I believe that if Ismarwan was given more intense deradicalisation courses, he could have made it, he could have left his old life,” said Yudi, describing his friend as “naive”, not highly educated and “very willing to learn”.

According to Yudi, Ismarwan attended BNPT rehabilitation courses once or twice a year. The agency also provided around 30 million rupiah (US$2,140) to help him set up his own business.

“The rehab course spends a lot of time teaching former convicts how to set up small businesses [to help them] earn a living. It also teaches about nationalism, but the deradicalisation part was small,” said Yudi, who is a lecturer at the faculty of social science and politics at the Ar-Raniry State Islamic University in Banda Aceh.

BNPT’s efforts focused more on disengagement from militancy by distracting a militant from his former life with economic activities, but there needed to be an equal emphasis on offering them an alternative narrative to radical ideas, Yudi suggested. He added that the agency had “very limited human resources”.

BNPT was unavailable for comment when contacted by the Post.

A MARTYR’S DEATH

Deradicalisation is also difficult because the ultimate aim of many of the militants is to die as martyrs, said Benny Mamoto, a former counterterrorism police general.

“When the militants are caught, they hope to be shot dead so they could complete their jihad [holy war]. When they end up being arrested instead, they then have to move back to the realm of reality,” said Mamoto, who investigated many of Indonesia’s major terror attacks including the 2002 Bali bombings.

Mamoto said the police needed to show they were “sincere” in helping militants, build good communications and find the cause that compelled them to join such groups.

“When you build up trust with them, the deradicalisation will proceed well. You also need to help their families,” he said, adding that an incompetent officer could end up angering the militants they were trying to help.

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While many convicts attend the deradicalisation programmes, Mamoto, who is now head of research for Police Study and Terrorism at the University of Indonesia, said some of them did so with the hope of having their jail sentence shortened.

Many militants are able to communicate with their jihadi network via mobile phones smuggled into prison by their friends or family, who may have bribed prison guards.

Jailed JAD leader Aman Abdurrahman published several books on Isis ideology in this way before he was separated from other prisoners in 2016, according to senior counterterrorism officials.

“If they are able to communicate with their network or other groups, the convicts will end up being active [while in prison] or get recruited into another group,” Mamoto warned. “The communication with other terror convicts will add to their skills of how to develop new attacks.”

Mamoto said there was a need to restrict communication between terror convicts and prison guards so as to prevent potential corruption. “In foreign countries, the interaction between a prisoner and a guard is strictly restricted,” he said.

LONG ROAD OUT OF MILITANCY

Yudi from Establish Peace warned that deradicalisation does not happen overnight. It took him five years before he changed his way of thinking, he said, with the help of counselling from Bali bomber Ali Imron – with whom he was incarcerated in a Jakarta prison.

He was freed in 2015 after five and a half years behind bars, while Ali Imron remains in jail.

“Ali Imron never judged me. All he said was ‘If your struggle was really true and aided by God, you would not end up like this. The training camp would grow bigger and bigger, not get destroyed’,” Yudi said. “That made me think and re-examine what I had believed in the past.”

It was former JAD leader Aman Abdurrahman who taught Yudi that the government was an infidel and it was his duty to hate it. While Yudi now accepts Indonesia and “its religious, political and human viewpoints”, his old life followed him when he left prison.

“Some members of radical groups would attend my seminars on radicalisation. During the seminars, they would accuse me of being a deviant for speaking on the topic,” he said. “I must say it bothered me at first but I can cope now. I even managed to have discussions with them and things are quite good now.”