JAKARTA - Indonesia's counter-terror chief called Thursday for greater power to hold suspects, warning that Islamist extremists remained active despite the death of terror mastermind Noordin Mohammed Top.

Saud Usman Nasution, the head of the Detachment 88 elite counter-terror squad, said the Muslim-majority country should not be lulled into complacency by the police killing of Noordin in September.

He said lawmakers should increase the period police can hold terrorist suspects without charge from a week to a month to allow more time for investigators to gather evidence and round up other cell members.

"We propose at least one month," he told reporters on the sidelines of a conference in Jakarta.
"Because these people are radical, we need to take an approach that will encourage them to talk."

Police currently have seven days before they must either release terror suspects or announce charges against them, but proposals to toughen the regulations are set to go before parliament in the New Year.

Islamist militant Noordin, blamed for a string of suicide blasts across Indonesia since 2003 including the July 17 hotel blasts in Jakarta, was gunned down in a police raid in September in Central Java.

A number of his accomplices, including top recruiter Syaifudin Zuhri bin Jaelani and former Garuda airline technician Mohammed Syahrir, have been killed and others captured in the probe into the hotel attacks, which killed nine people including two bombers.

Nasution said that while Noordin's death was a blow to regional extremists, other groups and networks continued to plot jihad or "holy war" against Western targets, particularly Americans.

Noordin led a splinter faction of the Jemaah Islamiyah regional terror network which he once dubbed "Al-Qaeda in the Malay Archipelago".

"There are many groups, not just Noordin's group, not just Jemaah Islamiyah. There are many new cells," he said, naming the Kompak and Jundullah extremist groups as potential threats.

"Their aim has not been achieved yet to form an Islamic state and an Islamic caliphate in several countries. That's not been achieved... so it's not over yet."

The leader of the US-trained Detachment 88 squad said 352 people had been convicted of terror offences in Indonesia between 2000 and 2009. Of those, 148 are still in prison and an additional 12 are on trial.