The National Police have arrested three women implicated in a foiled plot to bomb the State Palace. The women — Dian Yulia Novi, Tutin, alias Ummu Abza, and Arinda Putri — are suspected to have played key roles in planning and preparing for the thwarted attack.

Tutin, who was arrested in Tasikmalaya, West Java, on Thursday, is thought to have been the person who radicalized Dian and encouraged her to become a suicide bomber, West Java Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Yusri Yunus said.

Dian was arrested in Bekasi, West Java, near Jakarta, on Dec. 9, along with her husband Nur Solihin, the alleged leader of a small terrorist cell from Surakarta, Central Java, that is thought to have devised the terror plot.

The police said they believed Dian was the one assigned to carry out the suicide bombing.

Dian is the second wife of Solihin.But it was revealed that Dian was far earlier exposed to violent jihadist ideology from Tutin before she met Solihin. Yusri claimed that it was Tutin who originally introduced Dian to Solihin.

The police spokesman said Tutin and her husband were still undergoing intensive questioning as of Thursday evening. “The respective detainees are still being questioned at the Tasikmalaya Police station for further investigation,” Yusri said in Bandung on Thursday.

The local militants’ decision to use women to carry out the attack is in defiance of the policy of the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria, which discourages extremists from using their wives to launch suicide attacks and instead mainly relies on children to carry out such missions.

The director of the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC), Sidney Jones, told The Jakarta Post that female extremists in Indonesia wanted to have a greater role in attacks because of their admiration of women carrying out terrorist attacks abroad, which they learned about from the internet.

“Because they think it is more prestigious, more honorable, more satisfying if they want to be mujahidah [female jihadists]. While some [Indonesian] women are content to just be wives and mothers, they want more active roles in fighting,” Jones said.

“And we know because of conversations or chats online that some of these women have had where they expressed admiration for some of the women who played an active role in terrorist movements in Europe,” the expert went on.

The Surakarta terrorist cell was reportedly planning the attack on the State Palace under the guidance of Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian jihadist who is currently fighting for IS in Syria. Bahrun, a tech-savvy terrorist, also reportedly taught members of the cell how to make bombs.

“I don’t think that it was a special instructions from ISIS central, but I think that Bahrun may have encouraged women to take a role because they were less likely to be suspected. As Indonesian women wanted a greater role, they did not need to wait for instruction,” Jones said.

On Thursday, the National Police finalized the suspected roles of the seven suspects in the alleged terrorist plot, including the women.

Solihin is accused of recruiting the others and buying the chemical substances needed to make the 3-kilogram triacetone triperoxide (TATP) bomb seized by the police before the attack. He is also thought to have received money transferred by Bahrun from Syria.

Another suspect, Agus Supardi, allegedly acted as a courier alongside Solihin. It is thought that the pair took the bomb from Surakarta to Dian’s boarding house in Bekasi. Khafid Fathoni is suspected of helping the group make the pressure cooker bomb at his house in Ngawi, Central Java, with the help of another suspect Suyanto.

Meanwhile, Arinda allegedly facilitated the transfer of money from Bahrun to the group. The other suspect, Wawan Prasetyawan, reportedly stored the chemical substance at his house.

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