INDONESIA has no laws to compel detained terrorists to undergo rehabilitation programmes, and those who do so attend voluntarily, the former commander of the country’s elite counter- terrorism task force, Detachment 88, said in Singapore yesterday.

Dr Muhammad Tito Karnavian, who now supervises counter-terrorism efforts, described this as “another challenge for us”. But he said there have been promising results from among those who went through the programme and returned to society.

“Of course, we have some who are still quite radical. We’re not giving up, of course. We’re still approaching them,” he said at a seminar on The New Threat Landscape, organised by the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) and Singapore Press Holdings.

… The measures that speakers suggested to deal with the terrorism threat included cooperation and information sharing among intelligence agencies, border controls, and strong legislation on social media. Speakers included terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna of RSIS.