NTB Police Officer Killed by Young Attacker Linked to JAT

July 02, 2011



A teenager with professed ties to an extremist Islamic group has stabbed to death a police officer in West Nusa Tenggara’s Bima district.

Sixteen-year-old Sa’ban Umar, a student at a local Islamic boarding school who also claimed to be a member of the hard-line group Jamaah Anshorut Tauhid, approached the Bolo subdistrict police station on Thursday afternoon.

When First Brig. Rokhmad Syaiffudin, 29, confronted the teenager, Sa’ban pulled out a bayonet and stabbed the officer repeatedly, police spokesman Adj. Sr. Comr. Sukarman Husein said.

First Brig. Sukardin, who was inside the station with two other officers, rushed outside when he heard Rokhmad’s cries for help. Sukardin was also attacked but was able to fend off the bayonet with a chair.

Another officer, First Brig. Agus Salim, helped Sukardin immobilize and arrest Sa’ ban.

“The victim was rushed to the Bolo health center for treatment,” Sukarman said, but died soon after. The officer had been stabbed 14 times.

Sa’ban, Sukarman said, claimed to be a member of JAT, which is fighting for the implementation of Shariah law in Indonesia.

The hard-line group was founded by cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, who was recently sentenced to 15 years in prison by a Jakarta court. Bashir was convicted on terror charges related to a paramilitary training camp in Aceh.

Sukarman said that Sa’ban told investigators he attacked the officers as part of a jihad.

“He said that the police were working under laws and regulations that were not in line with Islamic Shariah and thus had to be considered infidels,” he said.

A search of Sa’ ban’s house in Sigi village turned up books and recordings on jihad, a machete and a bow and arrows.

But Insp. Gen. Fajar Prihantoro, an officer from National Police headquarters who was attending a ceremony on Friday in nearby West Lombok to mark the anniversary of the National Police, said the attack was not linked to Islamic radicalism.

“Even though the suspect claimed he attacked the police at the behest of God, he’ll be treated as an [ordinary] criminal. There will be no special treatment,” he said.

The officer added that although the suspect claimed to be a member of JAT, there was not yet any evidence linking the attack to Bashir’s network.

Police across the country had been put on heightened alert ahead of the anniversary following a string of recent attacks on officers. In May, two policemen were killed in Central Sulawesi by JAT-linked suspects.

( x the JG)