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Jakarta Post

IS influence extends beyond radical groups

More and more Indonesians unaffiliated with radical groups are joining or finding other ways to support the Islamic State (IS) movement amid aggressive campaigning by the movement’s local advocates

Jon Afrizal, Bambang Muryanto and Fedina S. Sundaryani (The Jakarta Post)
Jambi/Yogyakarta/Jakarta
Wed, March 25, 2015

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IS influence extends beyond radical groups

M

ore and more Indonesians unaffiliated with radical groups are joining or finding other ways to support the Islamic State (IS) movement amid aggressive campaigning by the movement'€™s local advocates.

Brig. Syahputra, a police officer with the Batanghari Police in Jambi, is suspected of having joined IS after he stopped coming to work on March 4 and left for Turkey.

Syahputra received a passport from the Jambi Immigration Office on Feb. 17.

Jambi Police chief Brig. Gen. Bambang Sudarisman confirmed Tuesday that Syahputra had joined the terrorist group.

'€œOn March 5, Brig. Syahputra left for Medan to visit his mother. However, he has not returned and we assume he has deserted us'€ Bambang said.

He explained that the Jambi Police began investigating Syahputra'€™s whereabouts after receiving information he had applied for a passport.

Meanwhile, a vocational high school student in Jambi, 18-year-old M. Judi Novaldi, was arrested by police for possessing IS-related paraphernalia and a replica AK-56 rifle.

'€œHe is currently being interrogated at Jambi Police headquarters,'€ Bambang said.

Bambang said police arrested Novaldi in response to a report filed by his parents and younger brother. They accused Novaldi of threatening to hold them hostage at their family-owned grocery store in East Jambi district after they refused to hand over Rp 300 million (US$23,184).

Following the overseas arrests of a number of Indonesians attempting to join IS in Syria and Iraq, the government has upped the ante in its fight against the proliferation of the terrorist group.

The National Police'€™s counterterrorism squad, Densus 88, arrested on Saturday five people who allegedly facilitated the travel of 16 Indonesians recently detained by Turkish authorities as they attempted to cross the country'€™s border with Syria to join IS.

The police believe the arrested men were part of an IS-linked group founded by radical ideologue Aman Abdurrahman, who is currently in prison on the maximum-security Nusakambangan prison island near Cilacap, Central Java.

Indonesians authorities estimate that more than 600 Indonesians have already joined IS in Syria or Iraq, while University of Nanyang terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna said that of the 27 militant groups in Southeast Asia that have declared their support for IS, 19 were from Indonesia.

According to Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC) director Sidney Jones, IS propaganda spread rapidly in the country because Aman has been translating it from Arabic to Indonesian during his imprisonment.

Separately, Financial Transactions and Analysis Centre (PPATK) deputy chairman Agus Santoso clarified Monday'€™s statement and explained that the inflow of funds from Australia to terrorist groups in Indonesia had reached into the '€œhundreds of thousands'€ of Australian dollars.

'€œI cannot specify any more than that, but you can say that it is in the hundreds of thousands,'€ he told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

Agus added that the PPATK and the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) had detected the inflow of funds near the end of last year, but waited to tell Densus 88, until January of this year.

He said the finding was made after the discovery of a large sum of money being transferred into the bank account of a figure with known terrorist ties.

National Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Agus Rianto said police were still analyzing the PPATK'€™s finding.

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