Indonesian police said they arrested five suspected militants on Tuesday and seized chemicals that were to be used for attacks on several locations, including the presidential palace.
West Java police spokesman Yusri Yunus said the militants arrested in the city of Bandung were members of Jemaah Anshorut Daulah, a network of about two dozen Indonesian extremist groups that formed in 2015 and pledges allegiance to Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Among those arrested were a husband and wife who were deported about three years ago from Hong Kong on suspicion of spreading radical ideology, Yunus said.
The couple, a 20-year-old man and his 24-year-old wife, were arrested in Bandung’s Kiaracondong neighborhood, not far from the rented house of a man believed to be the donor and bomb maker, Yunus said.
Police discovered a chemical liquid in various containers at the house, he added.
Yunus identified the two other suspects as a 30-year-old from the East Java town of Kediri and a 28-year-old Bandung resident.
“They learned to make bombs from Bahrun Naim’s blog,” Yunus said, referring to an Indonesian fighting with the Islamic State group in Syria who has instigated several attacks by Jemaah Anshorut Daulah in Indonesia.
“This arrest opened a new discovery linked to terror acts,” he said.
The group planned to launch the attacks at the end of this month, with targets including the presidential palace in Jakarta, as well as headquarters of the police’s elite force in Jakarta and Bandung, Yunus said.
Indonesia has carried out a sustained crackdown on militants since the 2002 bombings on Bali that killed 202 people, mostly foreigners.
The arrests of hundreds of militants and the killings of leading figures have neutralized the Jemaah Islamiyah militant network, which was responsible for the Bali bombings, but new threats have emerged in recent times from Islamic State group-inspired radicals.
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