Female would-be killers arrested

Duo planning to stab police officers

JAKARTA: Police have arrested two young women who planned to attack officers with sharp steel scissors, two days after a militant believed to be a lonewolf stabbed an officer to death.

Dita Siska Millenia, 18, and Siska Nur Azizah, 22, were arrested on Saturday after police received a tip-off that they were descending on the country’s Police Mobile Brigade (Brimob) headquarters, which has a detention facility that saw a dramatic two-day siege earlier this week.

“They are being interrogated,” Brigadier-General Muhammad Iqbal, a police spokesman, told news portal Jawapos.com yesterday. But police did not provide further details on the arrests.

The Straits Times understands that the occupation listed on the suspects’ IDs is “unemployed” and their marital status is single.

Police learnt that at least 50 militants were heading to Brimob headquarters from Pekanbaru (Riau province), Tegal (Central Java province) and several places of West Java province, including Karawang, Cirebon, Indramayu, and Tasikmalaya, a source told

The Straits Times.

On Thursday night, a 22-year-old man identified as Tendi Sumarno, a student, pulled a knife and killed a police intelligence officer near the detention centre before he was shot by the police.

The detention facility in the Kelapa Dua area, just 25km from the city centre of Jakarta, housed a number of militants jailed on terror-related charges.

All of them were transferred to the Nusakambangan prison island in Central Java province on Thursday.

Five police officers and an inmate were killed in a two-night standoff involving more than 150 inmates at the centre.

The rioting inmates, supporters of the Islamic State (IS), held police officers hostage during the 36-hour siege, killing and torturing the five police officers. Another four officers were injured.

The standoff started on Tuesday night and ended only on Thursday morning after the police mounted a raid.

Police spokesman Setyo Wasisto on Friday told reporters that police arrested four militants in Bekasi, West Java, at 1.35am on Thursday morning, after a tip-off that they were heading to Brimob headquarters to join forces with the rioting inmates in Kelapa Dua.

As the four militants, in handcuffs, were being taken to Jakarta, two of them made an attempt to escape.

One of them strangled an officer and tried to snatch his pistol but failed, Inspector-General Setyo said.

The two inmates were shot by the officers and one of them died in hospital.

The four were members of the Bandung, West Java, chapter of the Jemaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD) terrorist group, which is affiliated to IS.