The style of the attack, and the people who appear to be behind it, suggest that remnants of the networks responsible for the notorious 2002 Bali bombings and later attacks are trying to regroup under the banner of the Islamic State group.
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The country’s counterterrorism assistant director Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay later confirmed that a knife and IS documents were confiscated at the suspect’s house.
Muslim-majority Malaysia practises a moderate brand of Islam and has not seen any notable terror attacks in recent years.
An audacious attack by suicide bo…
Five attackers and two other people were killed in explosions and gunfire Thursday in downtown Jakarta.
Two civilians – an Indonesian and a Canadaian – were killed in the attack, as well as five attackers.
Then two militants outside the coffee shop seized two people – one of them a foreigner – dragged them into a parking lot and shot them, said Charliyan, the Jakarta police spokesman.
The civilian victims were Canadian Amer Quali Tahar and Jakarta residents Rico Hermawan and Rais Karna, who died Saturday.
Alarm around the world over the danger stemming from Islamic State increased after the Paris attacks and the killing of 14 people in California in December.
Counter-terrorism police had rounded up about 20 people with suspected links to Islamic State, whose battle lines in Syria and Iraq have included nationals from several Asian countries. But the low death toll pointed to the involvement of local militants whose weapons were rudimentary, experts said. Creating an atmosphere of fear and insecurity in a city of 10 million amplifies the impact of the attack well beyond the actual loss of life.
Among the 12 suspects subsequently rounded up in various Indonesian provinces, one is suspected to have received a money transfer from the alleged mastermind, Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian militant who authorities believed conducted the operation from ISIS’ headquarters in Syria, national Police Chief Badrodin Haiti said. The circumstances of his early release were not disclosed.
Still, the Indonesian government will have to pay special attention to the more than 200 of their citizens, about half of them women and children, who were expelled from Turkey and six other countries during 2015 before they could join ISIL.
The attackers are thought to have belonged to an IS faction made up mainly of Indonesians and Malaysians.
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Confusion has reigned in the wake of the incident, with authorities struggling to provide concrete information on the shock attack that unfurled in broad daylight on a busy street lined with shopping malls, top hotels, and foreign embassies. “We’re going to reach far”, Singh said. “Be patient, when the case is closed and things are clear we will disclose them”.
