 Police said Friday that a man detained earlier this month was not an al-Qaida operative who allegedly brought European Islamic militants to Indonesia for military training. The man has been released.
National Police spokesman Maj. Gen. Aryanto Budiharjo's comments followed a report in The Asian Wall Street Journal that Parlindungan Siregar, 38, was arrested in Indonesia two weeks ago and was being interrogated by intelligence officials. Earlier Friday, Maj. Gen. Police Ansyaad Mbai, who heads the terrorism desk at the Ministry for Political and Security Affairs, said he had been informed by Indonesia's intelligence agency that Siregar was in the country. But Budiharjo said the 30-year-old man arrested on Aug. 1 was not Siregar and has since returned to his family in Solo, a town on Indonesia's main island of Java. He said that Indonesian police, acting on a tip from Spanish Interpol, detained an Islamic teacher for questioning early this month but released him days later after deciding he was innocent. Siregar, a suspected member of Southeast Asia's Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist network, allegedly brought hundreds of members of a Spanish al-Qaida cell to the Indonesian island of Sulawesi in 2001 for secret training.
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