Mar.20, 2010, 9:20 AM, Source: The Jakarta Post

A team will be formed to follow up a recent report by the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK) that found indications of funding terrorist activities in 97 bank accounts, the National Police chief detective says.

“We will form a team to investigate these indications as soon as we receive bank account details,”  Comr. Gen. Ito Sumardi said Friday, declining to elaborate. PPATK head Yunus Husein

was earlier quoted by Antara as saying that the transactions “were in small amounts and not in the billions [of rupiah].”

The transactions were “limited to the domestic sphere”, he said Thursday after a meeting on money laundering prevention.

He said that terrorists usually used couriers carrying cash instead of sending money through banks.

“But this does not mean they are not using bank services. They still use them occasionally.”

Asked to elaborate, he said it would be the police force’s task to trace the account owners. “We only monitor the transactions,” Yunus said.

Recent raids on suspected terrorist training camps in Aceh province led police to Southeast

Asia’s most wanted terror suspect, Dulmatin, who was suspected among those masterminding and financing terrorist operations here and in the Philippines

To date, as many as 452 people, out of which 242 have been released, have been arrested over terrorism-related incidents.

However, of the hundreds of people taken to trial on charges of terrorism, few have ever been charged with financing it.

One exception is defendant Al Khelaiw Ali Abdullah, an Arab national accused of financing terror activity.

He is now being tried at the South Jakarta District Court.

Prosecutors charged him of assisting in last year’s twin hotel bombings, by providing Rp 52 million (US$5,700) to the terrorists involved.

He stands trial for violating the antiterror law and faces a maximum sentence of five years.

His lawyer, however, says the money was capital to open an Internet business.

Yunus said PPATK was also working with police to investigate other accounts suspected to be linked to terrorist activity.

Researchers say both sources of overseas and domestic funding could be traced due to a number of terrorist attacks that had occurred in the country.