Police have intensified a crackdown on alleged terrorists in several provinces, as they brace for possible attacks prior to and during the Idul Fitri celebration and claim to have foiled a plot to blow up police stations in West Nusa Tenggara’s (NTB) Bima regency.

Police said on Monday that three suspected Islamic State (IS) supporters, who were arrested in Bima in a recent joint operation by the National Police’s counterterrorism squad Densus 88 and the NTB Police’s Mobile Brigade, had been planning to blow up local police stations.

The police force has been targeted repeatedly by terrorists in the country, with the latest incident seeing a young man storm Banyumas Police headquarters in Central Java and injuring three officers. Only three days before the fasting month started, a double suicide bombing near a bus station in Kampung Melayu, East Jakarta, killed three police officers.

In Bima, authorities arrested 23-year old Kurniawan while he was allegedly testing a bomb in Tabaliu district, and two other suspects, Nasrul Hidayat and Rasyid Ardiansyah, in raids on their houses in Dore village, Palibelo district, on Saturday afternoon.

Aside from an active homemade bomb, police also reportedly found bomb-making materials, such as ammonium nitrate, urea nitrate and batteries in Kurniawan’s house.

“If the test had succeeded, [similar] bombs were to be detonated at the headquarters of the subdistrict police in Woha and Bima Police,” said deputy NTB Police chief Sr. Comr. Imam Margono during a press conference on Monday.

Imam added that Kurniawan “was acting as a bomb-maker and the person in charge of conducting surveys on the targets.”

Rasyid, 25, was involved in a robbery in Ciputat on the outskirts of Jakarta in 2013, while Nasrul, a 21-year old student of a university in the province, was acting as a supplier and courier for bomb-making materials.

The police investigation found that Kurniawan and Rasyid were ex-members of the East Indonesia Mujahidin (MIT) terror group, who had fled to Bima following the death of MIT leader Santoso in July last year. Kurniawan later reportedly joined the terrorist group Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD) in Bima, a home-grown IS-affiliated radical group blamed for a spate of terrorist attacks in recent years.

In January, Central Sulawesi Police said seven of nine MIT members on the Operation Tinombala taskforce’s wanted list were from Bima.

In Malang, East Java, authorities arrested on Monday Sahrul Munir, who is believed to be a member of a terror cell once led by IS supporter Abu Jandal, before the latter was killed during the United States-led international coalition’s advance on Mosul, Iraq, last November.

Sahrul went to Syria through Turkey to join IS rebels between 2013 and 2014, but later returned to Indonesia, as he found that the campaign did not earn him as much money as he had expected, said Malang Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Yade Setiawan Ujung.

Police are still investigating Sahrul — who was apprehended while opening a clothes kiosk in Pagentan village, Singosari district, on Monday morning — and have questioned his wife, who said her husband was no longer in communication with fellow IS fighters ever since returning home.

Sahrul lived in a rented house located only about 100 meters from the headquarters of a subdistrict military command.

In Central Java, police named three persons suspects of terrorism on Monday, following raids in three locations of the province a day later.

The suspects were identified as “Z” and “RS” who were arrested in the districts of Weleri and Ringinarum in Kendal regency, while the third suspect, identified as “AZ,” was nabbed in his house in neighboring Temanggung regency. (kuk)

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