Hardliners suspected of re-energising Jemaah Islamiah

By Michael Perry - Analysis

SYDNEY (Reuters) - The splintered radical Islamic Jemaah Islamiah is widely suspected of carrying out Friday's bombings in Jakarta, with one security report predicting only a day earlier that the group may be poised to strike.

No one has claimed responsibility for the near-simultaneous blasts that ripped through the JW Marriott and the Ritz-Carlton hotels in the Indonesian capital on Friday, killing nine people and wounding 42.

But security analysts say the militant Jemaah Islamiah, linked to al Qaeda and blamed for numerous attacks between 2002-2005 in Indonesia, including bombings on the island of Bali in 2002 that killed 202 people, is most likely responsible -- fuelled by young hardliners and recently released members from prison.

The size of the hotel attacks supports the findings of an Australian security report on Thursday which said a splintered Jemaah Islamiah was probably not capable of "replicating mass casualty attacks."

"In a way this may be taken as a signal, after the Indonesian elections, a reminder that JI is still in the game," said security analyst Rory Medcalf from the Lowy Institute in Sydney.

Indonesian security forces have successfully prosecuted Jemaah Islamiah members in recent years, forcing the group to become dormant.

Founded around 1993, the goal of al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah is the creation of an Islamic "super-state" spanning Indonesia, Malaysia, the southern Philippines, southern Thailand, Singapore and Brunei.

There have been no recent major bomb blasts while this month's presidential elections passed off peacefully, underscoring the progress made by the world's most populous Muslim nation since the chaos and violence that surrounded the downfall of ex-autocrat Suharto in the late 1990s.