Indonesian police said a suspected militant arrested earlier this week was making explosives more powerful than those used in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people.
Indonesian Police spokesman Rikwanto yesterday said that Rio Priatna Wibawa, 23, was linked to Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian militant fighting with the Islamic State group in Syria who is believed to have inspired attacks at home including a January attack in Jakarta that killed eight people.
Rikwanto, who goes by one name, said bomb-making explosives were recovered from a laboratory in Wibawa’s home in Majalengka town, West Java Province. With his ability, Wibawa was making bombs three times more powerful than those used in the Bali bomb attacks, Rikwanto said.
A security crackdown since the Bali bombings that were carried out by the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah militant group has netted hundreds of radicals and reduced their capacity for large attacks, but a new threat has emerged from the hundreds of Indonesians who have traveled abroad to fight with the Islamic State and their supporters in Indonesia.
Rikwanto said Wibawa, a dropout from an agricultural university who was “radicalized” by the writings of firebrand cleric Aman Abdurahman, received funds from radicalized Indonesians working in Taiwan, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia and was operating under the direction of Naim.
Several other suspected militants were involved in the bomb-making and police are searching for them, Rikwanto said.
Police, from their interrogation of Wibawa, believe he obtained bomb-making materials from contacts in Java, Sumatra and East Nusatenggara in Indonesia, as well as the Philippines.
Possible targets for attack were parliament buildings, police headquarters, embassies, television stations, places of worship and cafes, Rikwanto said.
Chemicals seized from Wibawa’s laboratory included RDX, which is a component in plastic explosives, TNT, high explosive peroxide HMTD and gunpowder.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s officially declared wealth is fairly modest: some savings and a jointly owned villa in Budapest. However, voters in what Transparency International deems the EU’s most corrupt country believe otherwise — and they might make Orban pay in a general election this Sunday that could spell an end to his 16-year rule. The wealth amassed by Orban’s inner circle is fueling the increasingly palpable frustration of a population grappling with sluggish growth, high inflation and worsening public services. “The government’s communication machine worked well as long as our economic situation remained relatively good,” said Zoltan Ranschburg, a political analyst
RSS