Four ‘admit plot to kill U.S. envoy’

Press, 16 September 1987, Page 10

Four ‘admit plot to kill U.S. envoy’

NZPA-Reuter Jakarta Four Islamic extremists have admitted plotting to kill the United States Ambassador to Jakarta because they believed he was anti-Muslim, a public prosecutor said. The independent daily “Kompas” quoted the prosecutor, Hatta Nasution, as saying the four defendants had admitted during preliminary investigations that they planned to kill the Ambassador, Paul Wolfowitz, in 1986. “Two of the defendants had admitted that they went to Jakarta in 1986 where they met two other militant leaders who gave them a knife and told them to kill the Ambassador,” Mr Nasution told a district court.

The two defendants, Iskandar Achmad and Taher Yaneh, denied the

charge, saying . that they had no knowledge of the assassination plan, but Mr Nasution said they had earlier admitted their involvement in the plot.

“The defendants had admitted that they wanted to kill the United States Ambassador because he was against the Muslim religion,” Mr Nasution was quoted by “Kompas” as telling the presiding judge.

Their trial, which opened last week, is in Sigli, a town in the predominantly Muslim province of Aceh in northern Sumatra. It is one of several new trials of Muslim militants accused of involvement in subversion in several parts of Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country.

The four defendants have already been tried

on charges of instigating riots and trying to kill non-Muslims in Aceh, whom they considered infidels. The judge is still to announce his verdict in that trial. The four were said to be leaders of a group of 34 people who staged a protest march last May, planning to kill people serving food in restaurants when Muslims were supposed to be fasting in the daytime during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The militants, dressed in white, yellow, red and black robes, and armed with traditional swords and daggers, planned to kill restaurant owners in Sigli who are mostly Chinese, the prosecution charged. Security officials fired warning shots to stop the march.