Britain wants to ban group whose goal is Islamic nation

Jamaah Islamiya, the Indonesian Islamic militant group identified by Tony Blair yesterday as a prime suspect in the Bali bombings, has had links with Osama bin Laden's al Qa'ida network since the late 1990s.

But despite the group's known terrorist links which have prompted Indonesia's neighbours to demand arrests, Jamaah Islamiya operates freely in Indonesia, thanks to the links of its leaders with the political establishment.

One of its leaders, Abu Bakar Bashir, was interviewed on the Today programme yesterday, where he accused Americans of carrying out the Bali attacks to justify extending the war on terrorism to Indonesia.

Although predominantly Muslim, Indonesia is not a hotbed of Islamic radicalism. However, a minority with ties to other organisations in the region is bent on establishing an Islamic state. Jamaah Islamiya, which wants to establish an Islamic state encompassing Indonesia, Malaysia and the Muslim islands of the southern Philippines, has been blamed for attacks that have killed more than 30 people and wounded more than 230 in the last two years. According to terrorism experts, al Qa'ida provides funding and training for the Jamaah Islamiya militants.

The group sprang from a religious boarding school known as Pondok Ngruki near Solo, in central Java, and became known as the "Ngruki network" as its members radicalised to resist the Suharto regime. Some of its members, including Mr Bashir, went into exile in the 1980s, returning after the ousting of President Suharto.

Their resistance has given them respectability, and there is some concern that preventive arrests of militants could be counter-productive by turning them into political heroes.

Since December, Singapore has arrested 31 people linked to Jamaah Islamiya suspected of plotting to blow up western embassies, water pipelines, the defence ministry and a chemical industrial estate there.

The Indonesian group is closely affiliated to Kumpulan Mujaheddin Malaysia, to the point of sharing its founders and leaders. The joint Malaysian-Indonesian cell hosted the planners of the attack on the USS Cole, in which the advanced plastic explosive, C-4, was used. Although investigators in Bali have not linked Jamaah Islamiya to the bombings, police said traces of the same explosives were found at the site of the weekend attack.