The Jakarta Globe, January 1, 2014.
Indonesia’s anti-terror police on Tuesday night gunned down six suspected militants allegedly responsible for a series of terror attacks during a raid in Ciputat, South Tangerang.
The six men were identified as Hidayat, Nurul Haq, Hendi Albar, Edo, Primus and Faizal. Police, though, said they would perform DNA tests to discover the actual identities of the suspects.
Hidayat was fatally shot on a street after he resisted arrest with a pen gun, after which National Police anti-terror unit Densus 88 besieged the house in Kampung Sawah, Ciputat. They were involved in an hours-long shootout with the suspects before killing five men.
“We suspect that Dayat [Hidayat] was the leader,” an anonymous source at the National Police headquarters told Jakarta Globe on Wednesday morning. “We pounced on Dayat while he was with someone else. [That person] was captured alive and is now being questioned.”
“After tackling Dayat, we besieged the house… and we exchanged gunfire for nine hours.”
It is not immediately known whether anyone escaped the raid.
The officer said the group was allegedly responsible for shooting four policemen in three different locations in South Tangerang between July and August. Three of the officers were fatally wounded.
Nurul allegedly drove a motorcycle to execute the attacks while Hendi carried out the shootings. The others’ roles in the crimes are still unclear.
The officer said the discovery of a motorcycle left at one of the crime scenes in Pondok Aren and the questioning of another terrorist suspect arrested in Tasikmalaya, West Java, led to New Year’s eve raid.
The group was also believed to be behind the bomb attack on the Ekayana Buddhist temple in West Jakarta in August, which injured three people.
Furthermore, they were allegedly responsible for the robbery of an office branch of Bank BRI in Panongan in the neighboring district of Tangerang last month. A backpack containing handmade grenades was found in a street food stall near the bank the day after, and it is believed that the group was the owner of the explosives.
They were linked to other terrorist cells, including those led by Abu Roban, who died in a May raid in Central Java, Autad Rawa, who is based in Makassar, Santoso, who operates in the jungles of Poso, Central Sulawesi, and Abu Omar, who has been arrested for smuggling firearms from the Philippines to commit terrorist acts in Indonesia. Autad Rawa and Santoso are wanted by police.
Nurul, police said, was a graduate of an Islamic boarding school in the West Java district of Ciamis, where another terrorist suspect, William Maksum, who was arrested in May, also studied.
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wo 1 jan 2014 - 7:32