The newspaper reported that Singapore authorities were aware of the planned rocket attack and had coordinated with their counterparts in Indonesia to help monitor the activities of the group and apprehend those involved.
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Indonesia’s National police spokesman Boy Rafli Amar speaks with journalists about the arrrest of six men on Friday on suspicion of planning a rocket attack on neighboring Singapore at police headquarters in Jakarta, Indonesia August 8, 2016.
It was social media chatter that gave him away. Also, it fueled the investigation when Gigih changed his profile picture on the Line messaging app to a banner pledging Indonesian support and solidarity for ISIS (the Islamic State, or IS).
However, experts have warned that despite the police success in stopping this particular group, there are likely to be other clusters of militants looking for targets to attack in the region.
Anti-terror personnel rounded up the six men after tracking them for months on social media.
“This group is an extension of Bahrum Naim’s vision and mission. It looks like he sent funds and instructions to them”, he added. Solo has been linked to several previous attacks by Islamist militants in Indonesia. Reports suggest that the men, aged between 19 and 46, were arrested from various locations across Batam in Indonesia.
However, authorities did break up a plot to bomb several embassies soon after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, and a Singaporean militant was accused of plotting to crash a hijacked plane into the city’s airport in 2002.
Jakarta-based security analyst Sidney Jones said Naim, the Syria-based militant, appeared to be using virtually every available form of social media to reach as wide an audience as possible, making it hard for counter-terrorist forces to track his followers. This was making it hard for counter-terrorist forces to track his followers.
“They would be the long-range variants of the Grad rocket -originally from Russian Federation but copied in China, Iran, Pakistan and several other countries”, Ripley said.
Kasiman, chief of the neighbourhood association where Gigih lives in Batam, told a news source that the house had been under surveillance for about five months before Friday’s raid.
Police seized bomb-making materials, guns and arrows from suspects’ homes in Batam.
“Their terrorist action plans were on Facebook”.
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Amar further told without giving details.
