Indonesian Police Arrest 4 Near Jakarta as Terrorist Plot Is Foiled
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Version 0 of 1. JAKARTA, Indonesia — The Indonesian police said on Saturday that they had safely detonated a bomb in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Jakarta and had arrested four people accused of planning an attack on the presidential palace this weekend, including a woman suspected of being a would-be suicide bomber. The thwarted plot was likely to cause particular concern in Indonesia because of the possibility that women with links to militant networks are now being recruited into more active roles, including planning and carrying out attacks. “This marks a new chapter of terrorism in Indonesia, where the suicide bombing was to be carried out by a woman,” a terrorism analyst, Ridwan Habib, said in an interview with Indonesian TV. People living within a 300-yard radius of a boardinghouse where the pressure-cooker bomb was found were evacuated during the police operation. Two men and a woman were arrested in the neighborhood, said Boy Rafli Amar, a spokesman for Indonesia’s national police. A fourth suspect, a man, was arrested in Solo, a city on the Indonesian island of Java, said a Jakarta police spokesman, Argo Yuwono. The bomb had the potential to cause damage within a wide area, Mr. Yuwono said. Umar Surya Fana, the police chief of Bekasi, a Jakarta satellite city where the plot was foiled, said the suspects had been monitored by the police’s counterterrorism squad as they traveled to Jakarta from Solo. The police said they believed that the suspects were planning to bomb a presidential guard-changing ceremony on Sunday that is a tourist attraction in Jakarta, Mr. Fana said. The woman’s will, which was found during the counterterrorism operation, stated her desire to take part in “amaliyah,” an Arabic term used by extremist groups for attacks or suicide bombings. “They deliberately chose the target on a Sunday, when many families are hanging out around the national monument and near the palace, with the intention of causing a lot of casualties,” said Mr. Habib, the analyst. The police said those arrested were suspected of being part of a militant network responsible for a bomb-making lab raided last month in the province of West Java that was operating under the direction of Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian fighting with the Islamic State in Syria. Those arrested in the raid last month planned to bomb targets in Jakarta, including the Parliament and Myanmar’s embassy. Indonesia, a largely Muslim nation, has carried out a sustained crackdown on militants since 2002, when 202 people were killed in bombings on the tourist island of Bali by radicals affiliated with Al Qaeda. But a new threat has emerged in the past several years from Islamic State sympathizers. |