Breaking News
Loading...

Indonesian Police Kill Suspect in Attempted Bomb Attack

Eight suspects have been killed and 17 arrested since May 5, when Indonesia’s counterterrorism unit, known as Detachment 88 and financed by the United States, arrested two men carrying pipe bombs in central Jakarta. According to the police, the men later admitted to planning to attack Myanmar’s embassy in retaliation for recent violence against minority Muslim communities there.

Raids were conducted through last Friday in West Java, Banten, Central Java and Lampung Provinces, three of which ended with members of a suspected terrorist network being killed in shootouts.

Late Monday night, a man threw a pipe bomb at the police post in the West Java city of Tasikmalaya, but it failed to detonate, said Gen. Boy Rafli Amar, a National Police spokesman. He said the suspect then tried to shoot the police with a homemade gun, but it also failed to work. The man stabbed an officer with a knife while the officer was trying to subdue him, and the officer’s partner then shot him, General Amar said.

“This is a revenge attack by the terrorist network,” General Amar said. He said the dead man was identified by detained suspects as a member of a terrorist group in West Java that is led by William Maksum, who was among three men killed in a shootout with the police on May 7 at a house near the provincial capital, Bandung.

The recent police operations, planned bombings and attacks highlight Indonesia’s continuing terrorism problem, even after the authorities have arrested and imprisoned hundreds of suspects since 2002 and killed 100 others in counterterrorism operations. While Jemaah Islamiyah, the Qaeda-linked Southeast Asian terrorist network blamed for major bombings in Bali and Jakarta from 2002 to 2009, has collapsed, analysts said another dangerous network was now operating.

The police said some of the suspects killed or captured since May 5 were connected to a group led by Abu Umar, a veteran jihadist who was arrested in 2011 on charges of smuggling weapons into Indonesia from the Philippines. Other suspects are believed to be linked to an alliance of militant groups that calls itself the Mujahedeen in Eastern Indonesia, or M.I.T., according to the police and analysts. That alliance is based in Poso, on Sulawesi Island, and is led by Santoso, also known as Abu Wardah, who is Indonesia’s most wanted terrorism suspect.

Sidney Jones, a terrorism expert with the International Crisis Group in Jakarta, said other groups were involved in the overall network, some more than others. One of the more active groups is led by the fugitive Sabar, also known as Abu Autat, who Ms. Jones said was believed to have formed an alliance with Mr. Santoso’s group in Poso last year and whose followers were among those arrested during police raids last week.

Ms. Jones said the broader network stretched from North Sumatra to Sumbawa Island in eastern Indonesia and had members who were trained in Mindanao, in the southern Philippines.

“It’s the only group left active in Indonesia that has experienced cadres with overseas training,” she said. “It’s also a national network in a way that these other little groups are not.”

According to the police, the network amassed 1.8 billion rupiah, or $185,000, through a series of robberies of banks and gold shops from January to April to finance training and operations.

“They may be really desperate for money — the old sources have dried up,” said Todd Elliot, a security analyst with Concord Consulting in Jakarta. “They are no longer getting any money from ‘Al Qaeda Central.’ And it’s a lot of money they have gotten. The 2002 Bali bombings cost only $30,000.”

Analysts said that at this point, the network was going only after small targets in provincial areas, in particular police buildings and personnel, which are seen as symbols of the country’s secular government. Before its collapse, Jemaah Islamiyah bombed nightclubs and restaurants on Bali in 2002 and 2005, and international hotels in Jakarta in 2003 and 2009, killing a total of 241 people and wounding hundreds more.

Analysts also said the Indonesian counterterrorism police had successfully infiltrated the network to the point where the police were conducting pre-emptive raids to arrest suspects and disrupt planning for terrorist attacks.

“The police are on top of these guys, so they get them before they can cause any mischief,” said Ken Conboy, the author of “The Second Front,” a book about Jemaah Islamiyah.


View the original article here

Related Post:

  • 0Blogger Comment
  • Facebook Comment