Jakarta – Indonesian
police have arrested dozens of suspected Islamic extremists on Java
island, most of whom were allegedly carrying out military-style training
on a remote mountain, police and reports said Saturday.
Around 30 were reportedly detained late
Friday on Mount Sumbing as they took part in the training, while another
five were arrested the same day in raids in the city of Malang.
It was not clear whether they were
linked to the gun and suicide attacks in Jakarta last month which left
four civilians and four assailants dead, and were claimed by the Islamic
State group.
- A member of Indonesia’s elite anti-terror police, speaking anonymously, confirmed there had been a “raid on an arms training session” taking place on a mountain.
- Local media reported that the group of around 30 were from Islamic extremist group Jamaah Ansharus Syariah and the training was on the slopes of Sumbing, in Central Java province.
- The arrests came after local villagers reported hearing gunfire, MetroTV reported, citing provincial police spokesman Liliek Darmanto.
- Air guns, knives, religious books and flags were seized at a house where some of the participants had stayed en route to the mountain, the report said.
In the separate raid in Malang, five
alleged Islamic radicals were seized by police backed by officers from
the elite anti-terror squad, said local police chief Yudho Nugroho.
“The five are still being held,” he said, adding that police had been “monitoring them for a while”.
The attacks in the capital centred
around a Starbucks outlet and were the country’s worst terror incident
in seven years, prompting police to launch a nationwide crackdown.
Authorities said last week that 33
people from radical Islamic groups who were plotting attacks against the
airport and other targets in the near future had 
been arrested, with
around half directly linked to the Jakarta attacks.
been arrested, with
around half directly linked to the Jakarta attacks.
Indonesia, the world’s most populous
Muslim-majority country, suffered several major bomb attacks by Islamic
radicals between 2000 and 2009, but a subsequent crackdown weakened the
most dangerous extremist networks.
Source: – AFP
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