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Indonesia: 4 suspected militants are China Uighurs

JAKARTA — Four suspected Islamic militants arrested in Indonesia over the weekend are members of China’s ethnic Uighur minority community and were trying to meet Indonesia’s most wanted extremist, authorities said today (Sept 15).

JAKARTA — Four suspected Islamic militants arrested in Indonesia over the weekend are members of China’s ethnic Uighur minority community and were trying to meet Indonesia’s most wanted extremist, authorities said today (Sept 15).

Police said they were investigating whether the four had links to the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.

Dozens of Indonesians have travelled to the Middle East to join the group and other militant outfits over the last year, energising the country’s long-standing extremist networks. Indonesian authorities, who have struggled against violent extremists for years, have woken up to the emerging threat in recent months. They have outlawed the Islamic State group, but have no laws to stop suspected militants from travelling abroad.

The four Uighurs were arrested on Saturday in Central Sulawesi province, a major hotbed of militancy in the country.

National police spokesman Colonel Agus Rianto said the four were arrested with three associates of Abu Wardah Santoso, a fugitive militant leader alleged to be behind the murder of several policemen and Indonesia’s most wanted terrorist suspect.

Col Rianto said police found stickers with the Islamic State symbol on them in the car the men were travelling in when they were arrested.

Authorities initially thought the four Uighurs were from Turkey, which has linguistic and ethnic ties with the Uighur homeland of Xinjiang, a region in north-western China.

Xinjiang is home to a separatist insurgency that is infused with Islamist militancy. Uighurs are known to have travelled to global jihadi hot spots, including the Pakistani border, over the past 15 years.

Starting in around 2009, groups of Uighurs either involved in or affected by the violence in their homeland have travelled across South-east Asia, many of them hoping to make it to Turkey to claim asylum from what they is persecution by Chinese authorities in Xinjiang.

Security expert Ridlwan Habib at the University of Indonesia, said that Santoso was believed to have dispatched several followers to Syria in recent months, and that the four Uighurs could be linked to the Islamic State group. “Santoso’s jihadist group is in need of funds and weapons assistance from the outside, while the IS needs a proxy to widen its influence to Indonesia,” he said. AP

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