October 17, 2002	Thursday	Sha'aban 10, 1423

JAKARTA, Oct 16: One of Indonesia’s most notorious militant groups, the Lashkar-i-Jihad, or Holy Warriors, has disbanded in the wake of the weekend terrorist attack in Bali that killed at least 180 people, news reports said on Wednesday.

Lashkar-i-Jihad leader Jafar Umar Thalib confirmed that his group — blamed for some of the worst atrocities committed during sectarian conflicts in Indonesian hot spots such at Ambon and Central Sulawesi — has disbanded although he denied the move was linked to the Bali bombings on Saturday night.

“We have disbanded ourselves; there has been no external pressure involved in this decision,” Thalib told Wednesday’s Jakarta Post.

Lashkar-i-Jihad’s disbanding comes at a time when Indonesian authorities, assisted by police specialists from Australia, Britain, Germany and the United States, have launched an investigation into who was behind the bombings, which seem to have been the handiwork of international terrorists with the assistance of a local network.

Indonesia, which has been described as Southeast Asia’s “weak link” in the war of terrorism, is under international pressure to curb the activities of its local Muslim militants in the wake of the Bali attack.

Lashkar-i-Jihad, which allegedly has close ties with some former Indonesian army generals, sent an estimated 2,000 of its sword- wielding followers to Ambon, South Maluku, to help the Muslim communities there when long-simmering rivalries with the well- entrenched Christian community turned into bloody clashes in 1999.

On Tuesday, the group reportedly closed its Ambon office and sent 700 of its warriors home.—dpa