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Police shelter as they pursue suspects after a series of blasts hit the Indonesian capital Jakarta today. Photo: AFP
A “Paris-style” suicide strike in Jakarta killed two civilians and left more than 20 others injured in a coordinated gun and bomb attack that also claimed the lives of five suspected attackers, police and government officials said.
A Canadian and an Indonesian died in the midmorning explosions and gunfire that were watched by office workers from high-rise buildings, police said.
The information division of the National Police Headquarters said on its Facebook account that among the injured, four are foreigners and 19 are Indonesians, including five policemen. The foreigners are an Algerian, an Austrian, a German and a Dutchman who works for the United Nations Environment Programme.
Plainclothes police aimed their handguns towards suspects outside the Starbucks after a series of blasts hit the Indonesia capital Jakarta on Thursday. Photo: AFP
According to Coordinating Minister for Political Legal and Security Affairs Luhut Pandjaitan, the attack began with an explosion inside a Starbucks cafe in the Menara Cakrawala building, near the popular Sarinah department store.
“A suicide bomber entered the Starbucks and blew himself up,” Pandjaitan told reporters. A Jakarta-based private television network aired footage showing the body of a suicide bomber inside the cafe.
A photo circulating on social media also showed a Caucasian man lying in front of the door of the Starbucks.
Tomi Sucipto, a spokesman of the U.N. Development Program, confirmed that the man, a Dutch citizen, is a staffer of the organisation and said he is undergoing surgery at an army hospital.
Following the first blast, Pandjaitan and Deputy National Police Chief Budi Gunawan said another group of suicide bombers attacked a police box located at an intersection near Sarinah. Photos posted on Twitter showed three men lying on the road next to the police box.
Gunfire later occurred in the parking area of the Menara Cakrawala building during which police shot dead two attackers, Budi said.
Police (left) hide behind vehicles during an exchange of gunfire with suspects hiding near a Starbucks cafe. Photo: AFP
Pandjaitan confirmed that a total of five blasts occurred including suicide bombings.
“We are still chasing after two perpetrators on a motorcycle carrying rifles,” National Police spokesman Anton Charliyan said, adding that an exchange of gunfire with the duo was ongoing in the Palmerah area in West Jakarta.
Islamic State officially claimed responsibility on Thursday night for the gun and bomb assault.
“A group of soldiers of the caliphate in Indonesia targeted a gathering from the crusader alliance that fights the Islamic State in Jakarta through planting several explosive devices that went off as four of the soldiers attacked with light weapons and explosive belts,” the group said in a statement.
An unidentified man with a gun walks in the street with a backpack as people run in the background on Thamrin street near Sarinah shopping mall in Jakarta after explosions at a Starbucks cafe. Photo: Xinhua via AP
The attacks followed several warnings in recent weeks by police that Islamic militants were planning something big. It was unclear if any perpetrators remained at large.
Gen. Anton Charilyan, a national police spokesman, said the attack involved an unknown number of assailants with grenades and guns, imitating the recent “terror acts” in Paris.
The weapons and arsenal suspected terrorists were carrying after a bomb blast in front of a shopping mall in Jakarta. Photo: EPA
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Hong Lei said China is shocked to learn of the attack and condemned perpetrators.
A staff member with China embassy in Indonesia said no Chinese national has been hurt during the attack after communicating with local police. As of now, the office has yet to receive any request of assistance from Chinese tourists travelling in the city.
A spokeswoman for the Security Bureau said on Thursday they have no plans to raise a travel alert for Indonesia currently but would continue to monitor the latest developments.
Hong Kong has maintained an amber travel alert for Indonesia since July 2009 when bombings of two hotels killed seven people and injured more than 50.
The amber warning is the lowest of the Hong Kong government’s three-tier outbound travel alert system suggesting signs of threats for travellers in the country. Hongkongers intending to visit or already there are advised to exercise caution.
Hong Kong’s Immigration Department said it had not received any calls for assistance from any Hongkongers affected by the blast so far. The department said it will continue to liaise with the Chinese Embassy in Indonesia to monitor the situation.
Aoura Lovenson Chandra, 33, an Indonesian Chinese filmmaker based in Jakarta, said fear remains after the attack has been contained.
“This seems to be a random attack comparing to previous bombings with specific targets like the Australian embassy or the J.W. Marriot Hotel. This attack worries me more than the previous ones because it’s hard to avoid as it’s on a regularly used main road, a close part of our daily lives,” Chandra told the South China Morning Post in a phone interview.
“But life must go on so we can only remain vigilant for now,” he said.
Map of Jakarta terror bombing sites.
Another 26-year-old student Wenny Astaria in Jakarta expressed grief over the tragedy but she is confident with the handling of local government and police.
“I’m not scared, Jakarta is still a safe place,” she said.
Before 2009, bombings at nightclubs on the resort island of Bali in 2002 killed 202 people, mostly foreigners.
No one claimed responsibility for Thursday’s attack on Thamrin Street, which prompted a security lockdown in central Jakarta and enhanced checks all over the crowded city of 10 million.
Charilyan said police had received information in late November about a warning from the Islamic State group that “there will be a concert” in Indonesia, meaning an attack.
“This act is clearly aimed at disturbing public order and spreading terror among people,” President Joko Widodo, said in a statement on television.
Indonesia President, Joko Widodo (Front right, white shirt) visited the blast sites targeted by attackers on Thursday. Photo: Presidential Palace
He has visited the site of the attacks and conveyed condolences for the families of the victims.
Widodo, who was in the West Java town of Cirebon, cut his trip short soon after being informed about the attack.
“The state, the nation and the people should not be afraid of, and be defeated by, such terror acts,” he said.
A police post in Jakarta was blown apart amid several explosions that rocked the Indonesian capital. Photo: Reuters
Tri Seranto, a bank security guard, told The Associated Press he saw at least five attackers, including three who triggered explosions at the Starbucks. It was not immediately clear if they exploded bombs or grenades.
Tri described them as suicide bombers, but police spokesman Charilyan denied they blew themselves up.
He said the two dead civilians were a Dutch citizen and an Indonesian. An Algerian man was among the 10 injured, he said.
But there was some confusion about the Dutch citizen’s status. A Dutch Foreign Minister spokeswoman in the Netherlands said he was seriously injured and was undergoing surgery.
After the explosions at Starbucks, a gunbattle broke out between the attackers and anti-terror police squads, and gunfire could be heard more than 1½ hours later.
Witnesses saw at least three bodies sprawled on the sidewalk after the fighting ended.
The area has many luxury hotels, and offices in high-rise buildings and embassies, including the French.
Tweets from the account of Jeremy Douglas, regional representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, described a bomb and “serious” exchanges of gunfire on the street outside his Jakarta office. “Didn’t experience this in 3.5 years in #Pakistan,” he wrote.
“A massive #bomb went off in front of our new #Indonesia office as @collie_brown & I exit car. Chaos & we're going into lock-down,” he wrote. And three minutes later: “Apparent #suicidebomber literally 100m from the office and my hotel. Now gunfire.”
About 30 minutes after his first post about the bombing, he posted that things were “quiet. Not comfortable quiet.”
Police were “sterilising” a theatre building close to the initial bombing site suspected as the hiding place for the terrorists.
“We are sterilising the building from basement to top,” Iqbal Kabid told reporters, according to The Guardian.
He said that a gunbattle between the attackers and police took place in the cinema in the same building as a Starbucks cafe that was attacked.
“We will declare the situation secure soon,” he said.
Last month, anti-terror police arrested nine suspected militants and said they had planned attacks “to attract international news coverage of their existence here.”
The country has been on high alert after authorities said they foiled a plot by Islamic militants to attack government officials, foreigners and others. About 150,000 police officers and soldiers were deployed on New Year’s Eve to guard churches, airports and other public places.
More than 9,000 police were also deployed in Bali.
People carry an injured police officer near the site where an explosion went off at a police post in Jakarta. Photo: EPA
On Tuesday, jailed radical Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir appealed to a court to have his conviction for funding a terror training camp overturned, arguing that his support for the camp was an act of worship.
The 77-year-old leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah militant network filed a judicial review of his 2011 conviction, when he was sentenced to 15 years in jail for setting up the camp in Aceh province. A higher court later cut the sentence to nine years.
Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, has suffered a spate of deadly attacks blamed on the Jemaah Islamiyah network in the past. But militant strikes in recent years have been smaller and less deadly, and have targeted government authorities, mainly police and anti-terrorism forces.
Additional reporting by Mimi Lau, Reuters and Agence France-Presse
Two civilians, five terrorists killed, officials say
By Ben Otto and
Resty Woro Yuniar
Updated Jan. 14, 2016 10:33 a.m. ET
One of the suspected terrorists stands with a gun at Thamrin street. VERI SANOVRI/XINHUA/ZUMA PRESS
JAKARTA, Indonesia—Multiple blasts and gunfire wreaked havoc in the Indonesian capital on Thursday in what officials said were coordinated Islamic State-linked terror attacks, leaving two civilians and five assailants dead.
A Canadian and an Indonesian died along with the five terrorists after the attackers struck in the heart of downtown Jakarta, setting off explosions and opening fire on those trying to flee the mayhem, Indonesian police said.
The extremist group claimed responsibility for the attacks in an official Arabic-language statement distributed to its social media accounts, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors global jihadist activity.
“In a unique security operation, a group of Islamic State soldiers targeted a group of Crusader citizens who are fighting the Islamic State in Jakarta,” the statement said. “May the civilians of the Crusader alliance and those who protect them know that there is no safety for them in the lands of Muslims after today, God willing.”
The gun-and-bomb assaults—the first major attack in the capital since two, near-simultaneous hotel bombings in July 2009—targeted an area popular with shoppers and tourists and were set in motion late Thursday morning as a suicide bomber detonated a device at a Starbucks, killing himself but no one else, police said.
Two more suicide bombers detonated blasts as motorists left their cars and joined hundreds fleeing the area. A Canadian citizen was shot near the Starbucks and an Indonesian was killed by shrapnel, police said.
Police shot and killed two other militants, leaving all five attackers dead, and said they found six small bombs after sweeping the area. Twenty civilians were injured, including a Dutch national and a German, officials said.
A spokeswoman for Canada’s foreign department said the government was working with Indonesian authorities to confirm the identity of the believed Canadian victim.
Officials said the militants came from an Islamic State-linked group in Solo, a city on Indonesia’s main island of Java, and had been in contact with terrorists in Syria. “We have detected communications between a Syrian group and the Solo group,” Deputy Police Chief Budi Gunawan said.
Indonesia has been on heightened alert for terrorism after police arrested several Islamic State-linked militants who were planning attacks during the holiday season in December. Police said the group had indicated there would be a “concert in Indonesia,” leading authorities to deploy more than 150,000 officers to guard places of worship and other public areas during the holiday season. Thursday’s perpetrators were from the same group, police said.
“There has been clamor among the ISIS community in Indonesia for [the militant group] to do something to show ISIS central leadership that Indonesia is important also,” said Todd Elliott, a terrorism analyst from Concord Consulting, referring to Islamic State.
Sources: Law enforcement officials; witnesses; OpenStreetMap; photo by GoogleEarth
Experts had warned that Indonesians who have gone abroad to Syria and Iraq to join Islamic State would have increased their tactical capacity to carry out terror attacks. Hundreds of Indonesians are among the foreigners who have rallied to Islamic State in the Middle East, authorities say.
The bombings ended a lengthy period without a major terrorist attack in Jakarta, the capital of the world’s most Muslim-populous nation and one with a reputation for moderate Islam.
In the 2000s, the city was hit by multiple terrorist attacks, including two separate assaults on a hotel run by JW Marriott, and a 2004 attack on the Australian embassy by an Southeast Asian terror network known as Jemaah Islamiyah. Some members of the group fought in Afghanistan and its leaders claimed to represent al Qaeda in the Malay archipelago.
The group also was responsible for Indonesia’s most deadly terrorist attack—the 2002 Bali nightclub bombs that killed 202 people, mainly Western tourists.
Indonesia successfully raised its counterterrorism efforts in the wake of the Bali bombings.
Jemaah Islamiyah was disrupted by an Indonesian antiterrorism police unit, whose members received training from the U.S. After the last major attack in Jakarta—on the JW Marriott in 2009, which left nine people dead, including the bombers—the police unit tracked down and killed a Malaysian leader of the group and arrested scores of other militants.
There have been sporadic attacks in outlying areas of Indonesia, a nation of over 17,000 islands, but Jemaah Islamiyah is widely thought by analysts to be much diminished. In recent years, terrorists have focused their resources on assaulting police, the force responsible for overseeing counterterrorism efforts in Indonesia.
President Joko Widodo condemned Thursday’s assault, saying that “the nation and the people must not be afraid, must not be defeated by terrorism like this.”
Indonesians expressed outrage on Twitter with the hashtags #KamiTidakTakut (We Are Not Afraid) and #prayforjakarta. Motorcycle taxis and ride-sharing Internet services offered free rides to people from the attacks site.
Indonesian stocks and currency, the rupiah, declined after the attacks but then recovered somewhat following an interest-rate cut by the country’s central bank.
The blasts occurred an hour before hundreds of diplomats, students and officials were planning to gather for a lunch event in the mall next door. “We were very lucky because we were expecting a lot of ambassadors and officials,” said Dino Patti Djalal, head of the event’s organizer, the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia.
—Anita Rachman, Sara Schonhardt, Karen Leigh, Paul Vieira and I Made Sentana contributed to this article.
Bahrun Naim left Indonesia a year ago to fight for the Islamic State group in Syria. Photo: Google Plus
Seven years ago, Bahrun Naim was quietly running an internet cafe in the small Indonesian city of Solo.
He has now been identified by police as the supposed mastermind behind the deadly attack on Jakarta claimed by Islamic State, pulling the strings from Raqqa, the radical group’s de facto capital in Syria.
In between, Naim was arrested in 2011 for illegal arms possession and jailed for three years, and police say that since then he has emerged as a key player in militant networks that have sprouted around Solo and across Central Java.
A man believed to be a terrorist, holds a gun amid Thursday’s attacks in Jakarta. Photo: EPA
A year ago, he left for Syria to join the frontlines of Islamic State, and police believe Naim was closely involved in co-ordinating Thursday’s assault.
Five of the attackers and two civilians were killed in Islamic State's first strike against Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation where the group wants to establish an Asian beachhead for its “caliphate”.
There had been hints of what was to come for weeks.
After the co-ordinated attacks across Paris in November, the militant intellectual published a blog in which he explained to his followers how it was easy to move jihad from “guerrilla warfare” in Indonesia’s equatorial jungles to a city.
An injured Indonesian policeman is taken from the site of a bomb blast in front of a shopping mall in Jakarta on Thursday. Photo: EPA
Reuters contacted Naim on November 24 via Telegram social messaging, using details provided by one of his acquaintances. In that exchange, he said there were more than enough Islamic State supporters to “carry out an action” in Indonesia.
“Just waiting for the right trigger,” the man identifying himself as Naim said.
Naim could not be reached for comment on Thursday.
Intelligence experts say that, not long after that Telegram exchange, intelligence officials began to pick up talk in social messaging chatrooms that an attack on Indonesia was imminent.
“Chatter among Islamists began to become more organised last month and there were discussions for the first time of a multiple attack,” said a Jakarta-based security adviser, who monitors radical group discussions on mobile messaging services for the government.
Counter-terrorism officials believe there are at least 1,000 sympathisers of the radical jihadist group across Indonesia.
The eavesdropping helped lead police to the arrest of more than a dozen men across the populous island of Java who were suspected of planning attacks over the Christmas and New Year holidays.
Bomb-making materials, a suicide vest and “jihad manuals” were found during the raids. Police said some of those rounded up had received funding and support from Naim, who believes Indonesia should be governed strictly as an Islamic country.
Naim had been planning the attack on Indonesia's capital for a while, Jakarta Police Chief Tito Karnavian said on Thursday, adding that he clearly had ambitions to become “the leader” of Islamic State in Southeast Asia.
Sidney Jones, a Jakarta-based expert on Islamist militants at the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, said in a November report that there was only a slim chance in Indonesia of an attack on the scale seen in Paris, but she warned then that the threat was growing under the government’s nose.
She noted that in one blog post, entitled “Lessons from the Paris Attacks”, Naim urged his Indonesian audience to study the planning, targeting, timing, coordination, security and courage of the Paris jihadis.
That said, experts have pointed out that the relatively low death toll in the Jakarta assault suggested the involvement of local, poorly armed militants with little or no training.
In the Telegram exchange with Reuters, Naim also spoke of more mundane affairs, explaining that he enjoyed life in Syria and had no plans to return to Indonesia.
“I move around, depending on where our emir orders us to go. It's good here in Syria. There's electricity, accommodation, water and it's free. The services provided by them are good, cheaper than in Indonesia,” he said.
Southeast Asian fighters used as ‘cannon fodder’ by Islamic State
Jakarta attacks are an alarming sign of the militant group’s expanding influence within the region, with suicide bombing on the rise as a result
Elementary school students hold placards during a small anti-terrorism rally in central Jakarta a day after a gun and bomb attack in the city, January 15, 2016. The placard in the middle reads: ‘We are ready to guard world peace.’ Photo: Reuters
Thursday’s attack in the heart of Indonesia’s capital by suicide bombers was funded by Islamic State (IS), Indonesian police said yesterday, after they arrested three men on suspicion of links to the plot and seized an IS flag from one of the bombers.
Until now, the group was known only to have sympathisers with no active cells capable of planning and carrying out a plan such as Thursday’s, in which five men attacked a Starbucks cafe and a traffic police booth with handmade bombs, guns and suicide belts. They killed two people – a Canadian and an Indonesian – and injured 20.
Suicide bombings have not historically been employed by groups in Southeast Asian but the attack, the first in Southeast Asia to be directed or inspired by IS, demonstrates the jihadi network’s growing reach and is part of an alarming trend that must now be confronted by security forces within the region.
Three weeks ago, Malaysian Mohd Amirul Ahmad Rahim, 26, strapped bombs to his body, got into a car and blew himself up in the IS capital, Raqqa. The blast killed 21 Kurdish fighters during an IS offensive against the 44th Syrian Democratic Forces, according to Malaysian police.
Before he died, Amirul wrote a will asking his wife and two-year-old son to remain in the war zone to continue his “jihad”.
“I have been trying to persuade my daughter to return home,” Amirul’s father-in-law, a trader from the state of Johor who declined to be named, told the South China Morning Post.
“My grandson is less than two years old. And my daughter is currently pregnant. I hope she will come home. But if she doesn’t, what can I do? I have to accept it. It is their ideology and belief.”
According to a senior counterterrorism source, there are currently eight Malaysian children in Syria. Two of them, aged nine and 11, are being trained to become fighters and are learning how to shoot and perform martial arts.
Amirul is one of the six Malaysians who have died as suicide bombers in Syria and Iraq. Another 11 Malaysians have died fighting for IS. A total of 100 Malaysians are estimated to be in Syria currently.
Amirul’s father-in-law recalled his daughter’s words: “People queue up to register as a suicide bomber.”
He described his deceased son-in-law as a very polite and well-behaved person who never got into trouble.
Indonesian woman holds a placard reading ‘We are not afraid’ during a gathering with candle light near the bomb site in front of a shopping mall in Jakarta, Indonesia. Photo: EPA
“There was no sign they were going to leave Malaysia,” he said. “I called and called them one day and there was no reply. The next thing, my daughter Whatsapped me to say they have gone to Syria.”
Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, has more than 1,000 people in Syria, according to senior counterterrorism officials. There is no official data for Indonesian suicide bombers but some experts believe there have been nine.
“My heart is broken seeing Malaysians and Indonesians killed in Syria and Iraq,” said Noor Huda Ismail, founder of International Institute for Peace Building, Indonesia’s first private deradicalisation programme.
“Southeast Asian fighters are used as cannon fodder by IS. They are treated as second-class citizens by IS Arab leaders who look down on non-Arabs. They are placed at the front line during battles where many of them are killed. Some of the Southeast Asian fighters who died as suicide bombers are not even mentioned in IS’ social media.”
Huda believes Malaysians and Indonesians are drawn to IS by online messages celebrating the deaths of suicide bombers as so-called “martyrs”.
“They volunteer as suicide bombers to prove their masculinity, to show they can do something for the Muslim struggle,” Huda explained.
The fact that so many Malaysians and Indonesians volunteer to be suicide bombers also reflects the “oxygen” of intolerance against Shias, Christians and minorities, Huda said.
According to Huda, suicide bombing was never part of the tactics used by armed groups in Southeast Asia until the first Bali bombing in 2002, which killed 202 people. Since then, the rise of IS has engendered a greater willingness among would-be martyrs to kill themselves in the service of their cause.
“This is a very scary prospect, that people can so easily and readily want to be a suicide bomber,” Huda said. “We don’t have to wait for IS members to return from Syria to carry out bombings. They are already here.”
Elite Indonesian police commandos raid a house of a suspected terrorist. Photo: AFP
Indonesian authorities said on Friday they had identified one of the attackers responsible for the deadly explosions in Jakarta a day earlier as a former terrorism convict who was released from prison early.
The disclosure came as police beefed up security in government offices, police stations, shopping centres and diplomatic missions across the capital following Thursday’s attack that left two civilians – an Indonesian and a Canadian – and five assailants dead.
One of the assailants was identified as Afif, who was sentenced to seven years in prison on domestic terrorism charges in 2010. The circumstances of his early release were not disclosed.
Photographs showed Afif, dressed in a baseball cap and jeans, and wearing a backpack and shoulder bag, pointing a gun at a crowd at the scene of the attack on Thamrin Street in Jakarta. Police said the backpack contained explosives and that Afif eventually blew himself up along with another attacker during a shoot-out with police.
Police spokesman Anton Charliyan said another attacker, whose name was not revealed, was also a former terrorism convict.
Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, was the scene of several major militant attacks by al-Qaeda-affiliated groups in the 2000s, but Jakarta had not seen a significant attack in several years following a harsh crackdown by police.
Authorities said Thursday’s attack was directed and financed by Islamic State (IS), the militant organisation based in Iraq and Syria, by an Indonesian living in Syria. The group claimed responsibility for the blasts in online statements, but analysts said the attack caused significantly less damage than other coordinated attacks attributed to the group, such as the November rampage in Paris that left 130 dead.
Indonesian authorities named the mastermind of the Jakarta attack as Bahrun Naim, who reports said had been living in the IS-held town of Raqqa. Bahrun praised the Paris attacks in a blog post in November and encouraged militants in Indonesia to carry out similar operations.
Jakarta police chief Tito Karnavian said Bahrun had instructed operatives in Indonesia to attack the police and places frequented by Westerners on Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
“We are in the pursuit of other cells and actors,” Karnavian said.
Dozens of Indonesians rallied Friday at the scene of the blasts outside a shopping mall, carrying flowers and shouting: “We are not afraid!”
Police in the city of Balikpapan in East Kalimantan province said they had arrested one suspected militant, but it was not clear if he was related to the Jakarta attack, the Antara news agency reported.
President Joko Widodo said on Twitter that “there is no place for terrorism in Indonesia.”
Islamic State in Southeast Asia: Wave of arrests in Indonesia and Malaysia follows deadly attack in Jakarta
The brazenness of the Jakarta assault, which had echoes of marauding gun and bomb attacks such as the Paris siege in November, suggested a new brand of militancy in a country where extremists typically launch low-level strikes on police.
Indonesian anti-terrorist policemen in Jakarta. Photo: EPA
Indonesian police on Saturday named the five men they suspect launched this week’s gun and bomb attack in Jakarta, which was claimed by Islamic State (IS), and said they had arrested 12 people linked to the plot who planned to strike other cities.
As investigators pieced together clues from the radical group’s first attack on Indonesia, neighbouring Malaysia said it had arrested a man in Kuala Lumpur who had confessed to planning a suicide attack in the country.
“We ... have carried out acts of force. We have done searches, we have made arrests and we have obtained evidence connected with the terrorist bombing at Sarinah,” Jakarta police spokesman Mohammad Iqbal told a news conference.
“We will not say how many people or what sort of evidence we have as it will upset out strategy. Be patient, when the case is closed and things are clear we will disclose them.”
Seven people, including the militants, were killed in Thursday’s attack near the Sarinah department store in the Indonesian capital’s commercial district. About 30 people were hurt.
Police held up pictures of the dead and wounded at the news conference, including a man who kicked off the siege by blowing himself up in a Starbucks cafe.
Another attacker, who opened fire with a gun outside the cafe, was named as Afif. A National Counter Terrorism Agency spokesman said Afif had served seven years in prison, where he refused to cooperate with a deradicalisation programme.
The brazenness of the Jakarta assault, which had echoes of marauding gun and bomb attacks such as the Paris siege in November, suggested a new brand of militancy in a country where extremists typically launch low-level strikes on police.
Police spokesman Anton Charliyan said the Jakarta five and the 12 others who were arrested had plans to attack cities elsewhere in Indonesia, including Bandung, which lies some 120km southeast of the capital.
In Malaysia, authorities have arrested four suspected militants and confiscated a weapon along with IS documents. Photo: SCMP Pictures
“There were general plans targeting certain places like police and government offices, foreigners or those cooperating with foreign entities,” Charliyan said.
In Malaysia, authorities have arrested four suspected militants and confiscated a weapon along with IS documents, national police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said on Saturday.
Security forces have been on high alert in the predominantly Muslim country in the wake of the attack in Jakarta.
“Congratulations E8 CK [anti-terror unit] for arresting one male suspect on Friday at a train station.... Weapon and IS documents were confiscated [from the suspect],” the police chief said on his Twitter account.
The train station is located near the iconic Petronas Towers in the heart of the capital Kuala Lumpur and houses a huge shopping mall frequented by foreigners.
The country’s counterterrorism assistant director Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay later confirmed that a knife and IS documents were confiscated at the suspect’s house.
In a statement, Khalid said the 28-year old Malaysian admitted that he was planning to be a suicide bomber.
“The suspect admitted that he had planned a suicide attack in Malaysia and was awaiting instructions from a member of IS in Syria,” he said.
The police chief added that on January 11, three Malaysian IS suspects were arrested by security forces after being deported from Turkey.
“They were first detained in Turkey while attempting to sneak into Syria to join IS fighters,” Khalid said.
Muslim-majority Malaysia practises a moderate brand of Islam and has not seen any notable terror attacks in recent years.
But concern has risen in the multi-faith nation over growing hardline Islamic views and the country’s potential as a militant breeding ground.
Authorities say dozens of Malaysians have travelled to Syria to fight for the radical IS group and warn they may seek to return home and import its ideology.
Jakarta attack highlights expanding jihadist threat but leadership struggle remains obstacle to even greater influence
Islamic State has accepted allegiances from jihadis in Nigeria, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia but has yet to formally recognise any radical groups in Southeast Asia.
A man holds a placard that reads "Stop terrorists" in Jakarta. Photo: Reuters
Last week’s attack on Jakarta showed for the first time that Islamic State (IS) violence has arrived in Indonesia, but security experts believe the radical group’s footprint is still light because militants are jostling to be its regional leader.
Police have identified Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian based in Syria, as the mastermind of the blitz of bombings and gunfire that left all five attackers and two civilians dead on Thursday. But perhaps the region’s most influential jihadi is a jailed cleric, Aman Abdurrahman, who with just a few couriers and cell phones is able to command around 200 followers from behind bars.
He sits at the head of Jamaah Ansharut Daulah, an umbrella organisation formed last year through an alliance of splinter groups that security experts believe could become the unifying force for IS supporters.
“They want to internalise the conflicts in Indonesia so they can bring more people from the outside,” said Rakyan Adibrata, a Jakarta-based terrorism expert who advises parliament, referring to the militants who have joined forces under one banner.
“Just like Syria, you need to create a conflict zone very big that can be a magnet for all jihadis to come across the world to Indonesia to wage war. That's their main objective.”
Police believe that Naim, himself an Abdurrahman supporter, was trying to prove his leadership skills to IS’s leaders in Syria by plotting the Jakarta attack.
Bahrun Naim was the mastermind of the recent attack in Jakarta. Photo: SCMP Pictures
“In order to get the credit from ISIS, he needs to prove his leadership capabilities,” Jakarta police chief Tito Karnavian said, using a common acronym for the Syria-based group.
He said Naim’s vision was to unite the now-splintered groups across Southeast Asia – including Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines – that support IS.
IS, which controls tracts of Syria and Iraq, has accepted allegiances from jihadis in Nigeria, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia but has yet to formally recognise any radical groups in Southeast Asia.
Indonesia-based Jemaah Islamiah (JI) was the last transnational group to successfully launch major attacks in the region, including the 2002 bombings on the resort island of Bali that killed 202 people.
JI, founded by Indonesian and Malaysian militants who returned from battling the Soviet Union in the Afghan jihad of the 1980s and early 1990s, has largely become defunct due to internal rivalries and a sustained crackdown by security forces.
Governments in the region fear that Malay-speaking militants returning from fighting for IS in Syria and Iraq could form a JI-like regional organisation. But security experts doubt there is much chance of a pan-regional group emerging that would bring militants from Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines under one banner because there is too much that divides them.
“At this point, it’s hard to imagine any Southeast Asia affiliate would be formed,” said a senior Philippines army counterterrorism official, noting that militants in his country are mostly interested in raising money from kidnappings.
“And one big obstacle to clear now is finding an amir that all of them can agree on,” added the official, who declined to be named because he is not authorised to speak to the media.
Aman Abdurrahman is perhaps the region’s most influential jihadi, despite being behind bars.
In Malaysia, former university lecturer Mahmud Ahmad is believed to be behind recent attempts to unite militant groups from three Southeast Asian countries, including the Abu Sayyaf group based in southern islands of the Philippines.
Abdurrahman remains perhaps the weightiest contender for leadership of IS in the region. While serving a nine-year prison term for aiding a militant training camp in Indonesia, he has managed to encourage hundreds of Indonesians to join the fight in Syria and Iraq.
“They can run the organisation from the inside,” said terrorism expert Adibrata. “Couriers bring cell phones and they record every word Abdurrahman says.”
Prison authorities have tried repeatedly to silence Abdurrahman. According to the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, 10 phones were confiscated from his cell in September 2014, but just a month later he got hold of a new phone and his sermons to followers inside and outside the prison resumed.
Indonesian police say they have arrested 12 people suspected of links to the Jakarta bombings, as the death toll in the brazen attacks by Muslim militants rose to eight after a third civilian succumbed to wounds.
An Indonesian man who was shot in the head when two attackers fired into the crowd died at a hospital late on Saturday, Jakarta police spokesman Colonel Muhammad Iqbal said on Sunday.
The audacious assaults by suicide bombers and gunmen on Thursday targeted a Starbucks and traffic police post in bustling central Jakarta, leaving eight dead, including three civilians, and more than 20 wounded.
It was the first major assault by militants in Indonesia since 2009. Police said the attackers were tied to the Islamic State group through Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian fighting with IS in Syria.
National police chief General Badrodin Haiti told reporters the 12 arrests were made in west and east Java and in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo island.
Elaborating on an earlier claim that the militants received funding from Bahrun, he said police have determined money was transferred to Indonesia via Western Union. He said that one of those arrested had received money transferred from IS.
Separately, authorities say they have blocked more than a dozen websites expressing support for Thursday's attack as they try to counter radical Islamic ideology online.
Communications ministry spokesman Ismail Cawidu urged Indonesians to report militant websites and social media accounts.
In recent years, Indonesian counterterrorism forces successfully stamped out the extremist group Jemaah Islamiah that was responsible for several attacks, including the 2002 bombings of bars in Bali that killed 202 people, as well as two hotel bombings in Jakarta in 2009 that killed seven people.
Terrorism experts say IS supporters in Indonesia are drawn from the remnants of Jemaah Islamiah and other groups, but are also trying to recruit new members.
Police on Saturday also released the names of the eight killed.
Aside from the already identified Sunakin and Muhammad Ali, the additional attackers were identified as Ahmad Muhazan Saron, who exploded a suicide bomb inside the Starbucks, and Dian Joni Kurniadi.
Police said they are still investigating the role of a fifth man known as Sugito. Their ages ranged from 25 to 43.
The civilian victims were Canadian Amer Quali Tahar and Jakarta residents Rico Hermawan and Rais Karna, who died on Saturday.
