Woman jailed over terror plot in Indonesia

JAKARTA: A would-be suicide bomber was sentenced to sevenand-a-half years prison for plotting to bomb a guard-changing ceremony at Indonesia’s presidential palace in Jakarta, her lawyer said.

The lawyer, Kamsi, who uses a single name, yesterday said her client Dian Yulia Novi, 28, will give birth within days and doesn’t plan to appeal.

Novi was arrested in December after police detected the plot to bomb the ceremony, a popular family attraction in the capital, Jakarta.

She was among four suspected militants that included her husband, Solihin, arrested one day before the planned attack.

A three-judge panel sentenced Novi on Friday immediately after hearing the last presentation from her lawyers, shortening the usual process due to the woman being in the final days of her pregnancy.

“She planned to run close to the presidential guards during the ceremony and blow herself up with a pressure cooker bomb,” said the presiding judge, Syafrudin Ainor Rafiek, at the East Jakarta District Court.

“The defendant has been proven guilty of violating the anti-terror law.”

Prosecutors had sought a 10-year prison term for Novi, a former migrant worker in Singapore and Taiwan. Kamsi said that Novi wasn’t aware of her pregnancy until several weeks after being arrested.

In a separate trial at the same court, the judges sentenced a second woman, Tutin, to 3 1/2 years in prison for hiding information about the plot from authorities.

Prosecutors have requested 15 years in prison for Solihin, the alleged leader of a small extremist cell in Central Java’s Solo city, and eight years for a fourth suspected militant, Agus Supriadi. Their verdicts are expected in mid-September.