Cops foil Myanmar embassy bomb plot
I.S. LINKS: Indonesian suspects were making explosives more powerful than Bali bombing devices
POLICE arrested a third Islamic State-linked militant yesterday accused of plotting to bomb the Myanmar embassy here as anger grows at a violent military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims.
The militants — all from a domestic cell affiliated with the Syriabased jihadist group — had amassed enough explosives to create bombs more powerful than those used in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, police said.
“They were helping plan a bomb attack against Parliament, the national police headquarters, the embassy of Myanmar and several television stations,” national police spokesman Rikwanto said.
Anger was growing in the country and other parts of the Muslim world over what had been described as the “ethnic cleansing” of Rohingya in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.
In Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, protesters urged their government to cut diplomatic ties with Yangon.
Indonesia’s anti-terror unit on Wednesday nabbed suspected bomb maker Rio Priatna Wibowo and seized a significant quantity of highgrade explosives from a laboratory west of the capital.
His arrest led to the capture of two other suspected militants in different parts of the country, Rikwanto said yesterday.
Bahrain Agam was detained on Saturday for allegedly buying the explosives while Saiful Bahri was arrested yesterday for helping to assemble the bombs, said Rikwanto.
Police said it remained unclear when the militants planned to carry out their assault, but that they had enough explosives to detonate a blast more than double that which levelled nightclubs in Bali in a fiery inferno.
All three were members of Jemaah Ansar Daulah, a local extremist outfit that has sworn allegiance to IS, Rikwanto said.