TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Police arrest two people linked to bomb funding
Police have arrested two people believed to have channeled money to the country’s most wanted terrorist, Noordin M
Change Size
P
olice have arrested two people believed to have channeled money to the country’s most wanted terrorist, Noordin M. Top, and Jamaah Islamiyah, stepping up their efforts to crack down on sources of funding for terrorists.
Police investigators said Tuesday that Iwan Herdiansyah, a resident of Kuningan, West Java, and Ali Mohammad bin Abdullah, a Saudi Arabian national, might have worked as couriers to channel foreign funding for the July 17 attacks on the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta.
The attacks killed nine people and wounded more than 50.
Witnesses said Iwan and Ali had been arrested by a group of people believed to be members of the police counterterrorism squad, Detachment 88.
A local resident, Tisna, said she saw four people jump out of two cars to capture Iwan as he was about to open his kiosk at the Cibingbim Market in Kuningan at 7 a.m. They also confiscated four of his computers.
“I thought they were thieves but since they held guns, I suspected they were policemen. I couldn't do anything then,” Tisna said, as quoted by tempointeraktif.com.
Iwan’s neighbor Hartono said Iwan sometimes received guests wearing robes, but knew nothing about their relationship to him.
Meanwhile, Ali, who is allegedly linked to Iwan, was arrested in Negrek, West Java.
“Ali has not been seen since Friday,” said Sari, the owner of a house Ali rented.
Sari confirmed the police had come to the house and asked Ali for his passport.
While the police did not deny arresting both men, they refused to confirm whether Detachment 88 had apprehended them.
“We will inform you later. We will have a press conference on the issue tomorrow [Wednesday],” police spokesman Sr. Comr. I Ketut Untung Yoga told The Jakarta Post later in the evening.
A number of police investigators, however, confirmed Iwan and Ali had been arrested for their suspected links to Noordin and Jamaah Islamiyah (JI).
Kuningan Police chief Nurullah said both were being interrogated after they were picked up at separate locations in the province. Investigators said authorities were following leads indicating that the July blasts — believed to have been planned by a violent offshoot of JI led by Noordin — were financed with money wired through Saudi Arabia, Thailand and Malaysia.
Police are interrogating the men to determine “if the money used to fund the bombings came from al-Qaeda, which provided funding for previous attacks in Indonesia”, the police officer told AP.
A number of intelligence experts claim the terrorist network is still receiving significant funding from both local and international donors.
“They [donors] keep sending large amounts of money to the country, most of which is unfortunately sent via couriers and thus very difficult to trace and stop,” Mardigu, a terrorist expert, said Monday.
The couriers, he said, entered the country through Dumai and Batam, both regions located within a half hour from Singapore and Malaysia.
Yunus Husein, head of the Financial Transaction Report and Analysis Center (PPATK), said his office had detected at least 68 financial transactions between 2004 and 2009 that were allegedly related to terrorist activities. “We have handed over those records to the police."
Syaefudin Jailani, a key suspect, reportedly received several payments of Rp 1 billion prior to the July 17 bombings from someone in Yemen, through his neighbor’s account.
