Indonesian police have arrested 12 people in connection with Thursday's deadly attack in front of a Starbucks in central Jakarta, including one accused of having received a wire transfer from the alleged ISIS-linked operative suspected of orchestrating the assault, the country's police chief said[1] Saturday.
Experts say that while it's hard to know how much of a foothold IS has established in Indonesia, the attack achieved two things: It showed that domestic militant groups are still capable of attacks despite being fragmented by the government's counterterrorism campaign, and gave at least the impression that IS now has the ability to launch attacks in Southeast Asia. "We are investigating what exactly the money was used for", Haiti said. "We have them in our pocket and we can identify them - whether it be in Java or outside Java", he said.
Two people were killed - a Canadian citizen and an Indonesian. Thirty people were hurt.
Convicted militant Afif, who also went by the name Sunakim, had been seen in photos that circulated in the news media. A National Counter Terrorism Agency spokesman said Afif had served seven years in prison, where he refused to cooperate with a deradicalisation programme.
Then two militants outside the coffee shop seized two people - one of them a foreigner - dragged them into a parking lot and shot them, said Anton Charliyan, a Jakarta police spokesman.
Police are still to reveal the identity of a man who died in a shootout with security personnel on Friday morning, raising speculation among reporters that it may be the country's most wanted, Abu Wardah Santoso, whose group - the Indonesian East Mujahideen - have also been linked to Daesh.
Workers clean up the area where Islamic militants mounted an attack Thursday in Jakarta.
Police said that they believe Naim leads a militant network known as Katibah Nusantara and is pulling strings from Raqqa, the IS group's de facto capital in Syria[2].
Police confirmed that Islamic State was responsible and named an Indonesian militant, Bahrun Naim[3], as the mastermind.
"I'm a little scared but honestly there is probably more police out there right now", US tourist Mike Rosenthal told[4] Reuters[5] on one of Bali's famously handsome beaches.
The police chief added that on January 11, three Malaysian IS suspects were arrested by security forces after being deported from Turkey.
The so-called Islamic State (IS) has said it carried out the attack.
ISIS said, while claiming responsibility for the attacks, that "a group of soldiers of the caliphate in Indonesia targeted a gathering from the crusader alliance that fights the Islamic State in Jakarta".
It was not immediately clear whether they had direct links with the attacks.
Police identified four of the five attackers in Thursday's violence.
Depok area police chief Col. Dwiyono told MetroTV that the men were arrested at dawn at their homes in Depok on the outskirts of Jakarta.
In Western capitals, Indonesia has always been a kind of poster child for progress: a developing nation with the world's largest Muslim population that has embraced both democracy and moderate Islam.
