T

he Batam Immigration Office learned its lesson after a resident, Dwi Djoko Wiwoho, took his family to the Middle East to join the Islamic State (IS) group two years ago.

It has since tightened its policy of issuing passports to citizens who intend to travel to the Middle East.

The office rejected 418 passport applications last year, and another 251 had been rejected as of April this year, mostly on suspicion that the applicants were trying to join IS or might have been planning to travel to the Middle East to work there illegally.

Office head Teguh Prayitno said his side had kept information on the applicants but had not discussed the matter further with the police, saying that the office would wait for the force to decide whether an investigation into the applicants was necessary.

“These are just suspicions raised in interviews conducted by our employees,” Teguh said on Tuesday. “We have not yet reported or communicated with the police [about the suspicions].”

Dwi, who was the director of Batam’s one-stop integrated service (PTSP), initially took leave to travel to Iraq in August 2015. He was supposed to return in September, but instead sent a message to his boss asking him to inform his parents that he had joined IS.

“His message was clear. [He said] he would join the jihad and go on a journey. That could only mean that he did go there,” then-National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Anto Charliyan said. Dwi left Indonesia with his wife and three children.

The police said they had information indicating that Dwi and his wife had gone to Iraq via Istanbul.

Dwi ia one of many Indonesians lured by the IS movement. The National Police said at least 600 people had left or tried to leave for Syria to join IS last year. Many of them reportedly died there, while some were deported from Turkey, Malaysia and Singapore. Others had been stopped at the airport as they attempted to leave Indonesia.

Batam City Council spokesman Nuriyanto said the increasing number of people whose passport applications had been rejected on suspicion of trying to join IS was alarming. He urged police to keep an eye on people thought to be attempting to join IS to prevent them from spreading its ideology.

The move to tighten passport applications seems to be exclusive to the city.

In Medan, the immigration office did not recall rejecting applications from those who intended to travel to the Middle East.

Lilik Bambang Lestari, the head of the Medan Immigration Office, said passport applications that had been rejected in the past five months were submitted by people who planned on traveling to Malaysia and Singapore.

“We rejected them because they were planning to work without acquiring the proper visa,” he said.

The Law and Human Rights Ministry’s Immigration Directorate General recorded that 3,293 applications had been rejected in 96 regional immigration offices across the country last year. However, the rejections were mostly to do with administrative issues, such as fake identities or invalid supporting documents. No bans were placed on flying to certain countries.

The ministry only noted that, as of May, 718 people had been prevented from leaving the country on the grounds that they might become victims of human trafficking.

Immigration Directorate General spokesman Agung Sampurno said on Tuesday that Indonesians flying to the Middle East to join IS had used different motives to trick officers, including claiming that they planned to go on an umrah (minor haj). “If they are going for umrah or haj, there [now] should be a recommendation from a travel agency,” Agung said.

Apriadi Gunawan contributed to this story from Medan