MPR Chides Densus 88 for Methods in Fatal South Tangerang Terror Raid

The Jakarta Globe, January 2, 2014


Senior officials in the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) on Thursday questioned the fatal shootings of six suspected militants during a recent anti-terror raid in South Tangerang, while the chief of the National Police maintained that the suspects had shot at police officers.

“I declare my disapproval of the methods used by Densus 88,” MPR deputy speaker Hajriyanto Thohari said in Jakarta, referring to the National Police’s anti-terror unit that carried out the raid. “Densus fatally shot the six suspected terrorists, but legally they had not been proven to be terrorists.”

The raid was conducted on Tuesday night in the subdistrict of Ciputat, South Tangerang. Police said the terrorist suspects resisted arrest and fired on officers, leading to a shootout lasting several hours, before six of the men were killed. A seventh man was arrested and was undergoing police questioning.

“We didn’t want any victims, either from our side or the [suspected militant group],” National Police chief Gen. Sutarman said separately. “We already gave them warnings to surrender. We had them surrounded, but they fired from inside [the house] and one of our officers was shot.”

The injured Densus 88 member is currently being treated at a South Jakarta hospital.

Hajriyanto continued, however, to take issue with the police’s direct method.

“The presumption of innocence was not upheld when they fatally shot [the terrorist suspects] on sight,” the Golkar Party politician said. “This isn’t a war. I still think ideally they should be tackled, arrested and brought to court.”

MPR speaker Sidarto Danusubroto echoed Hajriyanto’s statements, saying “there are smarter ways to minimize victims.”

“Senior officials [with MPR] will have to study these anti-terror raids,” he added, according to Indonesian news portal liputan6.com.

Hajriyanto said the MPR speaker and his deputies would hold a meeting to discuss the issue. They were also planning to advise the House of Representatives’ Commission I, which deals with defense and intelligence, and Commission III, which oversees law enforcement and security, to summon Densus 88 chiefs and seek an explanation concerning the unit’s counterterrorism activities.

“This is a nation of laws,” he said, “not an authoritarian one.”

Meanwhile, National Police spokesman Brig. Gen. Boy Rafli Amar told reporters that the suspected terrorist cell had planned suicide bombings targeting police stations and Buddhist temples.

“From information we’ve gathered, they were targeting Buddhist temples,” Boy said. “They targeted Buddhist temples because of the Rohingya issues. They sympathized with Rohingya Muslims, whom they thought were badly treated [by the Burmese government].”

The six deceased terrorist suspects were identified as Hidayat, Nurul Haq, Hendi, Rizal, Oji and Amril. Police allege that the group was responsible for a string of terror attacks, including the fatal shootings of three policemen in South Tangerang between July and August and the bombing of a Buddhist temple in West Jakarta in August, which injured three people.

They were also suspected to be behind the bank robbery in Panongan, in Tangerang district, last month to fund terror activities. Police discovered Rp 200 million ($16,400) in cash in the house where they conducted the New Year’s Eve raid, which was believed to have come from the bank heist.

A recent report by the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict entitled “Weak Therefore Violent: the Mujahadin of Western Indonesia,” said that Indonesia’s terror networks had been significantly weakened in recent years and that the lack of communal conflicts or repressive government meant that motivation for radicalization was relatively thin on the ground.

The report did, however, point to uncompromising police tactics as an issue that needed immediate attention.

“The only real motivation for temporarily disengaged jihadis to return to battle is to avenge mujahidin deaths at police hands,” the report read. “This means there is an urgent need for counter-terrorism police to review the procedures that are resulting in so many deaths of suspects, and make a more concerted effort to ensure that future targets are captured alive.”


( Hard to believe these politicians, OK to do all the comments from the relative safety of their offices while sitting on their square
behinds and letting others pick the hot coals out of the fire for them! Everyone knows Densus88 operates heavy-handed in chasing terrorists, they are not supposed to be nice guys. And did I read Indonesia to be a land of laws? I reckon they should tell the terrorists that, " hey, brothers go bomb something or some people, we will not do anything to you until we find you guilty after you've done it, 'cause we live in a law abiding country! Allemachies!! The terrorists kill indiscriminately and without mercy, so should be hunted down and rooted out without mercy. An eye for an eye..., siK.' comments)



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The Jakarta Globe, January 3, 2014.


The six terrorist suspects gunned down in a lengthy standoff with counterterrorism officers on the outskirts of Jakarta on New Year’s Eve were planning a series of suicide bombings, police revealed on Thursday amid criticism for their failure to capture the suspects alive.

Brig. Gen. Boy Rafli Amar, a spokesman for the National Police, said in Jakarta that police had uncovered evidence indicating the suspects were targeting at least two Buddhist temples, after allegedly setting off an explosive device at a West Jakarta Buddhist center in August that injured three people.

“They were planning suicide bombings, attacks on police stations, fund-raising efforts [through armed robberies] and the targeting of houses of worship such as Buddhist temples,” he said.

“The data we’ve recovered show several temples were on their radar, including two that they had already marked out.”

He did not elaborate on the temples in question, but said Buddhist targets were chosen because of the suspected militants’ sympathy for the plight of the Rohingya, a mainly Muslim ethnic group in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar that has come under violent persecution in recent years.

“They’re picking temples [as bombing targets] because of the Rohingya issue, their sympathy for the Rohingya, who they believe have been” treated unjustly by the Myanmar government,” the spokesman said.

Densus 88, the National Police’s counterterrorism squad, shot dead the six suspects during a raid on their rented house in Ciputat, South Tangerang, that began at around 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday and ended shortly before dawn the next day.

Those killed, identified as Hidayat, Nurul Haq, Hendi Albar, Edo, Primus and Faizal, were believed to be linked to a known terrorist cell that set off a phone-activated bomb outside the Ekayana Buddhist center in West Jakarta in August and the drive-by killings of three police officers in South Tangerang between July and August last year.

Among the items seized at the Ciputat house was a motorcycle used in one of the drive-by hits, in which police said Nurul was the driver and Hendi the gunman.

“We found a document that stated that Nurul was planning to perform jihad” — holy war — “in Syria,” Gen. Sutarman, the National Police chief, said on Thursday during a visit to a South Jakarta hospital to meet a Densus 88 operative injured in the shootout.

“He had prepared a passport to go there. But his [main] targets were actually Christmas and New Year’s Eve [locations], including temples.”

He added that a homemade pipe bomb found at a food stall in Tangerang, near a Bank Rakyat Indonesia branch that was held up in an armed robbery last month, was believed to have been assembled by Nurul. Police have blamed the bank job on the Ciputat group, citing it as one of their efforts to raise funds for terrorist activities.

Known perpetrator

Nurul has been on the radar of Densus 88 since a high-powered explosive device that he helped rig blew up accidentally at a Depok safe house in September 2012. The group was at the time believed to be preparing for a suicide attack on the Central Jakarta Police headquarters.

Police have identified Nurul as 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.

From the rented house used by the suspects, police recovered six pipe bombs as well as various bomb-making equipment and Rp 200 million ($16,400) in cash, believed to have come from the BRI heist.

Police said the explosives bore a striking resemblance to the pipe bombs found near the scene of the bank robbery.

They also found six firearms and six motorcycles, one of them confirmed to have been used in one of the drive-by shootings of police officers last year.

Police say the terrorist cell was linked to other high-profile units, including one led by the suspect Abu Roban, who was killed in a police raid in Central Java last May; a cell led by Autad Rawam based in Makassar, South Sulawesi; the cell run by Santoso, Indonesia’s most wanted terror suspect, who operates a militant training camp in the jungles of Poso, Central Sulawesi; and a cell led by Abu Omar, who was arrested for smuggling firearms from the Philippines to Indonesia.

Police followed up on the New Year’s Eve raid with the arrest on Wednesday night of another suspect, Sadulloh Rozak, 40, in Bogor.

The community unit chief in the village where the suspect had lived with his family for the past seven years said the raid by Densus 88 operatives came as a surprise, with no one in the neighborhood suspecting that Sadulloh, a worker at a local cement plant, might have militant tendencies.

Among the items that police seized from the suspect’s house were swords, airsoft guns — lifelike replicas of real firearms, which fire plastic pellets — and books on jihad.

High body count

While the counterterrorism unit has been widely praised for its crackdown, the high body count in its ongoing campaign has sparked concerns among state officials that Densus 88 has grown too trigger-happy and is compromising the rights of suspects to a fair trial.

Hajriyanto Thohari, a deputy speaker of the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR), said in Jakarta on Thursday that he disapproved of “the methods used by Densus 88.”

“Densus fatally shot the six suspected terrorists, but legally they had not been proven to be terrorists,” he said.

“The presumption of innocence was not upheld when they fatally shot [the terrorist suspects] on sight. This isn’t a war. I still think ideally [the suspects] should be tackled, arrested and brought to court.”

Sidarto Danusubroto, the MPR speaker, echoed Hajriyanto’s statement, saying “there are smarter ways to minimize the number of victims.”

“Senior officials [with the MPR] will have to study these anti-terror raids,” he added, according to liputan6.com.

Hajriyanto said the MPR speaker and his deputies would hold a meeting to discuss the issue. They also plan to advise the House of Representatives’ Commission I, which deals with defense and intelligence, and Commission III, which oversees law enforcement, to summon Densus 88 chiefs and seek an explanation concerning the unit’s counterterrorism practices.

“This is a nation of laws, not an authoritarian one,” said Hajriyanto, from the Golkar Party.

Separately, Sutarman defended his men’s actions as necessary under the circumstances.

“We didn’t want any victims, either from our side or the [suspected militant group],” he said.

“We already gave them warnings to surrender. We had them surrounded, but they fired from inside [the house] and one of our officers was shot.”

Boosting intelligence gathering

Tjahjo Kumolo, a House Commission I legislator from the opposition Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), lauded Densus 88 for taking a hard line on terror suspects.

“We have to show out appreciation for Densus 88’s tireless hard work and also the integrated intelligence operation through which the authorities were able to [foil terrorist attacks] in the fight against terrorism and radical and terrorism movements in Indonesia,” Tjahjo said in a press statement issued on Wednesday.

He added he hoped that intelligence and security officers would continue to boost their ability to uncover terrorist activities early and prevent future attacks.

“Curbing possible terrorist attacks is a must. Mapping of the cells and actions of radical or terrorist groups and anticipating the movements of new radical groups that pose a potential threat to national security and stability are necessary,” he said.

He added that officers needed to pay particular attention to the satellite cities around Jakarta, given the large number of suspects arrested or killed in places like South Tangerang, Bekasi and Bogor, all plotting attacks on targets in the capital.

“Keep on monitoring and coordinating. This should not only [be carried out by] security officers and integrated intelligence [operations], but it should also involve public figures from various elements of the community,” Tjahjo said.

He said he hoped the government would intensify its commitment to the counterterrorism campaign by providing more funding for intelligence-gathering operations both in the country and overseas.

A recent report by the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict titled “Weak Therefore Violent: the Mujahidin of Western Indonesia,” said that Indonesia’s terror networks had been significantly weakened in recent years and that the lack of communal conflicts or repressive government meant that motivation for radicalization was relatively thin on the ground.

The report did, however, point to uncompromising police tactics as an issue that needed immediate attention.

“The only real motivation for temporarily disengaged jihadis to return to battle is to avenge mujahidin deaths at police hands,” the report read.

“This means there is an urgent need for counter-terrorism police to review the procedures that are resulting in so many deaths of suspects, and make a more concerted effort to ensure that future targets are captured alive.”

The characterization of the terrorist threat today as being of a lower level than in the past chimes with the year-end review given by the National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT), which said last month that 2013 was “a relatively safe year” compared to 2012, despite the fact that the number of terror suspects arrested in both years was roughly the same.

“Incidents of terrorism this year, specifically bombings, were relatively few. And in those cases the scale [of the bombings] was smaller than last year,” Ansyad Mbai, the BNPT chief, said in December.

He added that while a relentless series of raids and arrests had helped foil terrorist attacks and break up cells, a pattern had emerged of smaller splinter cells forming in more regions throughout the country.

He noted that the only regions where these interconnected cells had not cropped up was in East Nusa Tenggara and Papua — both predominantly Christian areas.



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