JAKARTA (Reuters) - The Southeast Asian Jemaah Islamiah militant Muslim group has at least 300 fighters trained in the Philippines and Afghanistan, a senior Indonesian policeman said Thursday.
The leader of the group, linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda and suspected of involvement in a string of attacks including last year's Bali bomb blasts, was arrested in Thailand last week.
"According to our count it would be 300, but it could be more than that," Erwin Mappaseng, head of the police criminal investigation department, told a news conference when asked about the Jemaah Islamiah's strength.
The 300 had been trained in Afghanistan and the southern Philippines, Mappaseng said. Muslim guerrillas have been battling government forces in the south of the mostly Christian Philippines for decades.
"They're competent in war tactics including the use of bombs and explosives," he said.
The group wants to set up an Islamic state across much of Southeast Asia.
It has followers in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, mostly Muslim Malaysia, as well as in Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, which have Muslim minorities.
Mappaseng did not say where the 300 Jemaah Islamiah were believed to be from, nor where they were thought to be based now.
He showed reporters a photograph of a man with a mustache, saying it was the latest picture of the Jemaah Islamiah leader known as Hambali, who was Southeast Asia's most wanted man until he was captured in a Thai town last week with two accomplices in a Thai-U.S. operation. He is in U.S. custody.
Hambali had overall control of Jemaah Islamiah's operations including command of a core paramilitary squad, Mappaseng said.
"This force has a core special squad. When they conduct a bombing, they may receive orders from Hambali. We don't know how big this core is but indeed it's less than the 300-strong force."
Indonesia wants to question Hambali who authorities have accused of involvement in a series of bombings in recent years, including the blasts that killed 202 people in the tourist island of Bali in October.
Mappaseng did not directly link Hambali to an August 5 suicide car-bomb blast at Jakarta's JW Marriott Hotel that killed 12 people and wounded 150.
(c) 2003 Reuters
