Indonesia arrests 11 men over terror plot

JAKARTA—Indonesia has rounded up 11 terror suspects who planned to launch attacks against police and liberal Muslim figures, the national police spokesman said Friday.

“They planned to attack police and the JIL office,” Antan Bachrul Alam told reporters, referring to the liberal Muslim group which was the target of a parcel bomb in March which injured four people.

He said they were arrested earlier this week in Jakarta and other locations on Java island as part of a four-day operation. More than a dozen firearms were seized along with more than 270 bullets.

The spokesman said the suspects were suspected of involvement in smuggling weapons into the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country from the Philippines, through Malaysia.

Police arrested 16 terror suspects last month for a plot to poison police personnel with cyanide at station canteens. According to investigators they planned to inject the poison into mineral water bottles.

In the last few months dozens of suspects have been held who are allegedly part of a new militant cell behind a series of recent incidents, including book bombs sent to Muslim moderates and counter-terrorism officials.

The cell was linked to an April suicide bomb attack in a prayer room at a police compound in Cirebon, West Java.

Indonesia has been rocked by a series of attacks by the regional terror network Jemaah Islamiyah in recent years, including the 2002 Bali bombings which killed 202 people.