Beheaded girls were Ramadan 'trophies'
Stephen Fitzpatrick, Jakarta correspondent
November 09, 2006 from the Australian
THREE Christian high school girls were beheaded as a Ramadan "trophy" by Indonesian militants who conceived the idea after a visit to Philippines jihadists, a court heard yesterday.
The girls' severed heads were dumped in plastic bags in their village in Indonesia's strife-torn Central Sulawesi province, along with a handwritten note threatening more such attacks.
The note read: "Wanted: 100 more Christian heads, teenaged or adult, male or female; blood shall be answered with blood, soul with soul, head with head."
Javanese trader Hasanuddin appeared in Jakarta Central Court yesterday charged with planning and directing the murders in October last year. He faces a death sentence if found guilty under anti-terrorism legislation.
Hasanuddin allegedly returned from a visit to members of Philippines Islamist group the Moro Islamic Liberation Front with tales of how that organisation regularly staged bombings to coincide with Lebaran, the festival that ends the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. He later spoke with a preacher in Poso, Central Sulawesi, about whether such a plan could work in Indonesia, but expressed doubt about whether it was appropriate.
However, after further discussion with friends, he decided that beheading Christians could qualify as an act of Muslim charity.
Conscripting several accomplices at a local pesantren, or Islamic school, he directed one of them, Lilik Purnomo, to seek out "the head of a Christian", prosecutors alleged.
"It would be a great Lebaran trophy if we got a Christian. Go search for the best place for us to find one," Hasanuddin allegedly ordered his companion.
Lilik returned to say he had found an "excellent" target - a group of schoolgirls who travelled to and from class by foot in the Central Sulawesi village of Gebong Rejo. The village is in the district of Poso, where hundreds of people have died in sectarian violence in recent years.
Many observers worry that Central Sulawesi has become the latest battleground in a deadly jihad.
Three Christian men were executed there last month for their role in a massacre of Muslims in 2000 and there have been a series of deadly attacks in the province in recent months.
Prosecutors yesterday detailed how Hasanuddin, Lilik and co-accused Irwanto Irano planned the schoolgirl beheadings with six other men. They prepared six machetes and black plastic bags for carrying off the severed heads and spent several days surveying the area where the students regularly passed by.
The operation was called off on one occasion, when a woman spotted the attackers hiding by the roadside, waiting for their victims. On the night before the attack, Lilik told Hasanuddin: "I hope you are ready to receive your Lebaran gift."
The attack was launched the following morning, but only four of the six targeted girls appeared.
Lilik, directing the attack from a nearby hill, told his accomplices to act quickly so that the remaining two girls could still be killed should they appear behind their friends.
The attackers cleanly beheaded three of the students but a fourth, Noviana Malewa, escaped after a struggle and ran away screaming. Her attackers gave chase but were unable to catch her.
The bodies, dressed in school uniform, were left by the roadside near the execution site, but the heads were carried in a backpack to Hasanuddin.The trial of his two co-accomplices was adjourned until Wednesday, when Hasanuddin will also reappear.
4 comments:
hi capt. long time since i’ve left a note. i haven’t been reading your blog since you’ve turned your attention to political issues. i still drop by to see if you’re musing the mage but i prefer to avoid the details of disaster gripping the various corners of the globe. i don’t know if it’s a copout to glaze over in the presents of what’s going on or how it got to be, but i just don’t see a solution or resolution in the forensics of history. i tend to think history itself is the enemy. we’ve got to ask what is history if we’re ever going to escape its grip. not to excuse it but to understand its implication for tomorrow. imagine an amnesia bomb, imagine a new born child, imagine everyone walking out their front door in the morning with no recollection of the burdens they lumbered around yesterday, freedom! isn’t that the goal of the magician? i know i’m not saying anything here, it’s just piss in the wind, but it’s incredible to think that something as immaterial as thought has managed to manifest in this way. what is it really? i mean, does a small idea grow n grow in intensity until a mind is so oystered that there is no escape? can mental conditions be so appalling that relief is derived in this kind destruction? are they fighting an enemy or the entrapment of their own minds? are we all victims of thought? i don’t know. is there anything in the magician’s tradition that unravels this?
uh oh, i should have looked over that before i hit the button. miss a little “of” and all of a sudden the context of “kind” can change. there’s nothing kind about it, it should have read ‘this kind of destruction’. this story sinks your heart into a black hole of despair!
monkeys.
im not sure history is the problem, rather the human brains tendency to invest so much in it.
essentially, is there in any real history. isnt it just a collection of recorded opinion. hasnt it always been the go to construct history to fit the current situation.
personally i dnt have the faith that devoid of history folks would act much differently. if they want to maim and humiliate they still will, citing some other reason. those that act ignorantly do so because of their personal wiring.
i agree that the goal of a magician or a mystic or a whatever is to become free of the restraints of their past. but surely to remove it is no freedom, merely escape.
as for decapitation etc. im yet to see the islamic connection. none of its because anybody is muslim or christian or israeli or iraqi or whatever.
its all because they are brain damaged primates trying to make sense of information their little dormant brains cannot digest.
the problem is not WHAT you believe, but THAT you believe.
mmm, i wish i had an antidote, but ayahuscia helped greatly, i felt damaged, jaded and cynical, i felt like i hated humanity and its pathetic attempts at evolution, i was overwhelmed by a media frenzy and possibly part of the problem.
post ayahuascia, i find myself at peace and connected to ths strange world we live with, at a much deeper level than ever before, this planet spoke to me, it is so beautiful, powerful and dignified and sensual i wish i could share it with everyone.
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