Indonesian police yesterday arrested three suspected militants in a pre-dawn raid and hunted down others across the country, a day after an attack by Islamic State (IS) militants in the heart of Jakarta.
An Indonesian and a dual Canadian-Algerian citizen were killed in Thursday’s late-morning siege near a busy shopping district, along with the five attackers. Twenty-four people were seriously wounded, including an Austrian, a German and a Dutchman.
It was the first time the radical group has targeted the country with the world’s largest Muslim population, and the brazenness of the attack suggested a new brand of militancy in a country more used to low-level strikes on police.
Police chiefs across the country were put on high alert, some embassies in Jakarta were closed for the day and security was stepped up on the resort island of Bali, the site of a suicide blast in 2002 which killed 202 people, including Taiwanese Eve Kuo (郭惠敏) and four members of a Taipei-based rugby club.
Indonesian Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Luhut Pandjaitan confirmed media reports that three men had been arrested on suspicion of links to the plot and that an IS flag had been seized from the home of one of the identified bombers.
Raids were also underway across other parts of Java and on other islands to round up suspected militants.
“Now we are sweeping in and outside Java, because we have captured several members of their group, and have identified them,” Indonesian National Police spokesman Anton Charliyan said.
Returning to the area outside Jakarta’s oldest department store, Sarinah, where Thursday’s attack unfolded, Indonesian President Joko Widodo briefly toured the area and spoke with workers.
“The most important thing, thank God, is that yesterday, in a very short time — three to four hours — the situation was brought under control,” Widodo said.
Indonesian National Police Chief General Badrodin Haiti said that all activities of the group responsible for the attack were funded by IS.
He said the operations were funded through Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian who was arrested in 2011 and spent one year in jail for illegal possession of weapons before going to Syria to fight alongside the group.
Police said that they believe Naim leads a militant network known as Katibah Nusantara and is pulling strings from Raqqa, the IS group’s de facto capital in Syria.
“His vision is to unite all ISIS supporting elements in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines,” Jakarta police chief Tito Karnavian said, using another acronym for IS.
“We need to strengthen our response and preventive measures, including legislation to prevent them ... and we hope our counterparts in other countries can work together because it is not homegrown terrorism, it is part of the ISIS network,” Karnavian said.
Pandjaitan said his office was working with parliament to make changes to legislation that would allow pre-emptive arrests.
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