Indonesia says captures head of Jemaah Islamiah

By Telly Nathalia

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia has captured the head of Southeast Asian militant group Jemaah Islamiah (JI), police said on Friday, marking what appears to be a major blow for a group blamed for a string of deadly bombings.

The man, who was caught on Saturday in the central Java city of Yogyakarta, was named as Zarkasih, the chief of the country's anti-terrorist unit told a news conference. He is also known as Mbah, which means grandfather in the Javanese language.

The announcement came just two days after police said they had caught the country's most-wanted Islamic militant, Abu Dujana, who heads a military wing of JI.

"He is the emergency head of JI. He is above Abu Dujana and was captured on the same day," said Suryadarma Salim Nasution, who leads Detachment 88, the country's anti-terrorist unit.

Asian and Western authorities blame JI for a series of attacks in Southeast Asia, including the 2002 bombings that killed more than 200 people on Indonesia's resort island of Bali.

Although there has been no major bomb attack since 2005, in raids in March police said they had found a huge cache of weapons, explosives and chemicals that could be used to make a bomb even bigger than the main device used in 2002.

At the news conference, police showed video testimonies from Zarkasih and Dujana, in which the former said he was acting head.

"In 2004 there was a leadership vacuum and there was pressure to fill the vacuum. A body was set up to fill the void so we set up a caretaker body. My colleagues appointed me to lead the body," the grey-haired Zarkasih, 45, said on the video.

Police said the bespectacled Zarkasih, who was dressed in a T-shirt and was clean shaven in the video, had received military training in Afghanistan and had been an instructor at a militant training camp in the southern Philippines.

"He oversaw the movement of arms, ammunition, explosives and active bombs," said Nasution, referring to Zarkasih's role in JI.

He also oversaw operations in Poso, an area in the island of Sulawesi that has suffered from religious and ethnic clashes.

Dujana said in the video that he had undergone military training in the Pakistan city of Peshawar and in Afghanistan. He said he also served as an instructor at a camp in Peshawar.

"My present position is the head of the army of JI."

FUGITIVE

"The JI network still exists, they are still building their power continuously. They recruit, train and collect weapons and ammunition," said Nasution. "We have arrested hundreds of them but they still exist in different forms and organizations."