Indonesia arrests seven suspected militants

Indonesia’s elite anti-terrorism squad arrested seven suspected militants, including four Turks who are believed to be planning to join a jihadist group in eastern Indonesia with possible links to the Islamic State group, the police said yesterday.

The four Turkish men were captured late on Saturday in Parigi Mountong, a town in the Central Sulawesi province, on their way to Poso, a neighbouring mountainous district considered to be Indonesia’s terrorist hotbed, said national police spokesman Brigadier-General Boy Rafli Amar.

He said the authorities were tipped off to their whereabouts after the police arrested three Indonesian suspected militants hours earlier during a separate raid near Parigi Mountong to search for the country’s most wanted terrorist suspect, Abu Wardah Santoso. The police seized Islamic State symbols and documents in that raid.

Santoso is being sought in connection with several attacks on Java island and Poso, where a Muslim-Christian conflict killed at least 1,000 people from 1998 to 2002. Brig-Gen Amar said all of the suspected militants had been flown to the capital, Jakarta, yesterday for questioning. AP