M

ost professional criminals might prefer to maintain a low profile while carrying out their illegal business, but that is not the case with some self-proclaimed hitmen in Indonesia.

Unidentified men describing themselves as “professional assassins” have openly offered their services through local blogs, pembunuh-bayaran.blogspot.com (professional-assasin.blogspot.com) and hitmanindonesia.wordpress.com. The latter website has been deactivated by Wordpress administrators due to “a violation”.

“I started this business three years ago, simply because of financial problems,” the author of pembunuh-bayaran.blogpost.com posted late last year.

“I advertised my services just for fun, but jobs did come to me,” he wrote.

The writer related how his first commission was to kill a man who was allegedly having an affair with his client’s wife in May 2009.

“The target was a banker in Bandung [West Java],” he wrote. The client gave him a photograph of the target, an address and Rp 5 million (US$550).

“I was shaking when I received that amount of money. I thought about just running away with the money but fate dictated otherwise. I always keep my promises,” he said without revealing the rest of the story.

He claims his second job was to kill a businessman in Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan, in June 2009.

“I told my client to cover all my travel expenses and I asked for a large sum of money — hoping that he would cancel the job,” he wrote, “but it turned out he was willing to pay the amount I demanded.”

He said that he had prepared two scenarios to kill his target: to poison the businessman at a club, or to shoot the target as he left the club.

“I put the poison in his drink and watched him from a safe distance. If he died, no one would suspect poisoning—they would assume he had overdosed,” the alleged assassin said.

Shortly after, the target collapsed. The blog’s author then called his client to ask for his fee.

On the website’s profile, he claims that he deliberately does not publish his contact details “for security reasons”. “Just drop your details and I will contact you immediately. I will do it my way, not like other websites who take orders,” he said.

Before it was banned, the owner of the blog hitmanindonesia.wordpress.com listed his email address as shinig4mi444@yahoo.com, stressing that “we are deadly serious”.

National Police chief Gen. Timur Pradopo said that the police would take firm action against the websites’ creators.

Jakarta Police’s cyber crime unit chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Audie Latuheru said that the unit had started to investigate the websites immediately after it had received reports from the West Java Police.

“If there have actually been transactions between the service provider and clients, we will arrest and charge both parties with premeditated murder,” Audie said on Thursday, pointing out that his unit tracked hundreds of websites offering illegal services, ranging from prostitution to assassination, every day.

Meanwhile, criminologist Erlangga Masdiana said that the police should ensure the veracity of the information on the websites as they investigate.

“The websites might be pranks. It is not natural for professional killers to openly offer their services like that. However, things such as these can be very disturbing to the public, who might feel unsafe after learning that such services are easily accessible,” Erlangga said.