Indonesian Anti-Terror Squad Kills Suspected Terrorist
On June 4, police investigators collect evidence from the blast site, next to a damaged motorcycle, by a suicide bomber in Poso, on Sulawesi island known for militant attacks. The nation’s anti-terror squad continues to make arrests of suspected terrorists.
Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesBy Joko Hariyanto and I Made Sentana
Indonesia’s counter-terrorism squad on Thursday killed one suspected terrorist and arrested two other alleged terrorists in an eastern province, seizing weapons and alleged bomb-making materials, police said.
Suardi, 51, was fatally shot as he opened fire on police officers who were trying to stop his mini-van outside a forest in Bone district, in South Sulawesi Province, South Sulawesi police spokesman Endi Sutendi told The Wall Street Journal. The district, about 1,400 miles northeast of the nation’s capital of Jakarta, is located on the eastern coast of the southern part of the Sulawesi Island.
The police spokesman said the anti-terrorism squad arrested two other men: Umail, a 37-year-old man who like many Indonesians goes by only one name, and a 17-year-old whom Mr. Sutendi referred to only by his initials, UKM, because the police didn’t find an identification card on him.
The Wall Street Journal was unable to contact the arrested men for comment.
The police seized two guns, ammunition and around 2 kilograms of fertilizer, the police spokesman said. Fertilizer is often used to make bombs by militants in Indonesia.
National Police spokesman Boy Rafli Amar said the three men were allegedly members of a group that allegedly is responsible for series of recent attacks on police in Poso, in Central Sulawesi Province on Sulawesi Island.
Ansyaad Mbai, Indonesia’s counterterrorism chief, said late last year that Poso is the new front in Indonesia’s fight to suppress violent Islamist groups.
The area has been rocked by episodes of violence between Muslims and Christians. Since the late 1990s, at least 500 people are estimated to have been killed in sporadic violence that has also prompted more than 80,000 people to move out from Poso. Indonesia doesn’t allow foreigners to travel there.
Officials say militants are fomenting sectarian unrest between Muslims and Christians in Poso to destabilize the country and promote their goal of creating an Islamic nation.
Islamist terrorism in the country peaked in the 2000s, when Indonesia suffered its worst bombings, in Bali in 2001, which police believe were conducted by the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist group.
In the years since, a revamped security force has arrested or killed scores of alleged key leaders. Terrorist networks have been severely depleted, limiting their capacity to pull off large-scale attacks, security analysts say.
But police say they are concerned about the proliferation of small terrorist groups that they say continue to emerge across the sprawling archipelago, though the groups haven’t been able to mount major terror attacks. In recent months, police have arrested several suspected terrorists allegedly belonging to these small groups.
More than 85% of Indonesia’s population of close to 250 million is Muslim. While an overwhelming majority of the country’s citizens are moderate and solidly support the country’s secular government, some analysts warn the country is becoming increasingly intolerant of minority religious groups.
Source http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2-357841/
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