Militant Admits Beheading Three Christian Girls

One of the three Islamic militant suspects has admitted that he took part in the beheadings of three Christian girls in Central Jakarta District Court, 15 November 2006.

|PIC1|Hasanuddin told the judges from Central Jakarta District Court that he and the two other men were involved in the beheadings of the three Christian girls in the October 2005, because he wanted to take vengeance on the deaths of Muslims, Open Doors has reported.

"I was indeed involved in the beheadings, but we did it because the authorities did nothing about the massacres of Muslims", Hasanuddin said.

The three victims, students from a Christian high school, were ambushed and beheaded while walking to their school through a cocoa plantation at rural area, Gebang Rejo. The rural area is close to the provincial capital of Poso, about 1,000 miles North-East of the Indonesian capital Jakarta.

Their heads were left near the police station and in front of a church. The decapitations of the Christian girls created shock waves in Indonesia and abroad.

Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation. Nevertheless, Central Sulawesi generally has equal numbers of Muslims and Christians.

The province on Sulawesi Island was the scene of a bloody sectarian war in 2001-2002 that killed around 1,000 people from both Christians and Muslims.