INDONESIAN POLICE HOLD MILITANTS

>> JAKARTA: Indonesia’s counter-terrorism squad has arrested four suspected Islamic militants who were trying to establish a jihadist training camp in eastern Indonesia and who likely had links with Abu Sayyaf militants in the southern Philippines, police said.

National Police spokesman Boy Rafli Amar said the men were arrested in several locations on the island of Java on Thursday and were connected to four militants ambushed by police on the same day near Jakarta. One of those in the ambush was fatally shot by police.

Mr Amar said all eight were members of Jemaah Anshorut Daulah, a network of Indonesian extremist groups led by imprisoned radical cleric Aman Abdurrahman that was formed in 2015 and pledges allegiance to Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Muslim-majority Indonesia has carried out a sustained crackdown on militants since 2002, when bombings on the tourist island of Bali by al-Qaida-affiliated radicals killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. A new threat has emerged in the past several years from IS sympathisers.

Suryadi Mas’ud, one of the suspects arrested on Thursday, told police his role was to purchase rifles from militants in the Philippines and he had traveled there several times to meet Isnilon Hapilon, an Abu Sayyaf commander, who agreed to provide M16 and M14 rifles.

Mr Amar said the group was planning to establish a new jihadist training camp after IS-affiliated militants based in Poso on Sulawesi were decimated by a monthslong police and military campaign that also killed their leader, Abu Wardah Santoso.

The planned location for the camp, the Halmahera archipelago, was chosen because of its relative proximity to Abu Sayyaf militants in the southern Philippines, he said.

Mr Amar said earlier investigations found that five guns had been sent from the Philippines to Indonesian militants. Two of them were used in a Jakarta suicide bombing and gun attack in January last year that killed eight people including four attackers, he said.