Sunday, Sep 09, 2012
The authorities in Indonesia launched a manhunt and were investigating possible links to terrorism after finding explosive materials at a house in the suburbs of Jakarta, police said on thursday.
Neighbours called the police when they saw a cloud of smoke rising from the home of a man named Mr Muhammad Toriq, who fled, leaving his mother, wife and children behind, Jakarta police spokesman Rikwanto said.
"Late Wednesday afternoon, residents called the police to report the smoke coming from Muhammad Toriq's house. Police arrived and an hour later, discovered explosive materials," Mr Rikwanto said.
"We are working with anti-terror agencies and the national police to find him and investigate whether he was linked to any groups planning acts of terror."
Among the materials found were detonators, aluminium powder, sulphur and boxes of nails, the spokesman told AFP.
The incident came after a shootout last week in Solo in central Java that left two terrorist suspects and an anti-terror officer dead.
Meanwhile, six men associated with an Islamic school founded by a radical cleric plotted to set off bombs and shoot police to wage "holy war" in an Indonesian town, one of the suspects said in an interrogation video released by police on thursday.
Two suspected militants and a member of an elite anti-terrorism squad were killed last Friday when police raided the group in Central Java.
Bayu Setiono, 22, was arrested during the raid, another man was arrested Wednesday and two suspects are at large, AP reported.
In the 10-minute video, released at police headquarters, Bayu described their group as an "underground group without amir (leader), without baiat (pledging of allegiance).
"We planned to kill policemen and create a situation like Ambon and Poso, for the sake of upholding Islamic Shariah and the establishment of a caliphate in Indonesia," he said, referring to the Muslim-Christian conflict that killed thousands from 1999 into the 2000s.
"Our targets, since 2007 until now, are infidels and policemen," he said.
Bayu had worked at Al-Mukmin Islamic school in the Central Java town of Ngruki, while others were alumni of the school, co-founded by convicted radical Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir.
