Sunata is on top of the police’s most-wanted list for his alleged involvement in a series of bombing attacks and a planned assassination of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and foreign guests during a scheduled Independence Day ceremony on Aug. 17.

National Police chief Gen. Bambang Hendarso Danuri told the press in Jakarta that the police were still questioning the suspects.

“Detachment 88 arrested Abdullah Sunata and Sogir, who had worked with Azahari before. The police killed one of the suspects during an exchange of fire and one policeman was shot in the chest and is currently being treated,” he said, referring to bomb-maker Azahari, who was shot dead by the detachment in East Java in 2005.

Police identified the murdered suspect as Yuli Karsono, and the other arrested as Agus Mahmudi.
Bambang didn’t say whether the police had uncovered evidence the suspects had been planning an attack.

“The police raided a boarding house owned by Sugimin at about 3 p.m. before a fire fight broke out at about 4:30 p.m. The police seized weapons and a bomb in a backpack from the house.

Villagers of Cungkrungan in North Klaten district, Klaten regency, Central Java, said they knew that two men had rented a room in the house but had no idea they had been involved in terrorism.

The police had earlier raided a house in Girimulya village in the same district, arresting Mulyono, alias Abu, his wife and two children, and confiscating explosives and weapons at the house.

Before the discovery, the police had been hunting Sunata for his role in planning a militant training camp in Aceh and for recruiting terrorists.

Police have arrested 61 suspected militants and killed 14 in a series of raids since February, when authorities broke up a training camp run by a previously unknown terrorist group calling itself al-Qaeda in Aceh.

In 2006, Sunata was sentenced to seven years in prison for possession of weapons and for hiding Noordin M. Top, a Malaysian who was wanted in connection with five major bombings in Indonesia.

Noordin was killed by police in September 2009. Sunata was released in April 2009 for good behavior but returned to the terrorist network.

Last month, the police blocked a web blog publishing an article allegedly written by Sunata, in which he called on fellow former convicted terrorists to keep their faith in jihad and not to follow in the footsteps of those he said had become anshoru thogut, or “the helpers of evil”.

Ken Conboy, a Jakarta-based expert on Southeast Asian terrorist groups, said it would be significant if Sunata had been caught alive.

“He’d been able to connect a lot of the dots about the Aceh operations, from funding and training to potential targets,” he said as quoted by the Associated Press. “What were these guys going to be used for?”

Blontang Poer and Slamet Susanto contributed to the story from Surakarta, Central Java

Popular

RI, Australia strengthen partnership on taxing crypto assets

Analysis: Indonesia denies normalization with Israel to enter OECD

Citroen to produce electric cars in Indonesia