The Indonesian police claimed Monday it has arrested several members of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), a shadowy terror group with alleged links to al Qaeda, in recent raids in Central and East Java. It remains unclear how many suspects were in custody, but National Police Chief Sutanto said last week seven people were held by the anti-terror unit. Earlier in the day, another suspect was captured at his residence in the East Java capital of Surabaya. "These people are JI members," national police spokesman Sisno Adiwinoto told reporters here. "They have links with JI, but their role was still unclear. All we know is that they posses explosives."
He said some of the detained suspects were involved ithe September 2004 car bombing at the Australian Embassy here and the market bombing in Maluku. A suspected militant was killed and another wounded during an ambush in the southern Java town of Yogyakarta last week, and in a subsequent raid in Central Java, police confiscated a cache of explosive materials, rifles and thousands of ammunitions. JI is widely blamed for major bombings in Southeast Asian countries, including Indonesia, the Philippines and southern Thailand. |