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Family tried to deradicalize suspected knife attacker
The latest terror attack on Indonesian soil in which three policemen were stabbed in an attack carried out in the name of the Islamic State (IS) group has once again shown how the nation’s youth is vulnerable to radical content online.
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A police officer guards the location where three policemen were attacked in Cikokol, Tangerang, Banten, on Oct. 20. A Tangerang Police chief and two members of the Tangerang Traffic Police were injured in the attack. (JP/Dhoni Setiawan)
S
ultan Azianzah, 23, a suspected IS sympathizer who is alleged to have attacked the three policemen in Tangerang, Banten, on Thursday, had long been known to have embraced radical ideology, and his family had tried unsuccessfully to deradicalize him.
The terror suspect, who succumbed to his injuries after being shot by the police, may have been radicalized in 2013 when he made contact with pro-IS militants via the internet, according to the National Police.
At the time, his family, including his two brothers, both policemen, noticed that Sultan had become more reclusive and regularly visited internet cafes.
“He told his family that he was going to work but [they discovered] he was not. [He] often went out, telling his family that he was visiting an internet cafe,” National Police spokesman Ir. Gen. Boy Rafli Amar told reporters on Friday.
His family’s suspicions intensified in 2015, when Sultan left home for no reason. They later found him at Ansharullah Islamic boarding school in Ciamis, West Java.
The school is managed by Fauzan Al Anshori, a suspected member of Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD) — a terrorist faction in the country that supports IS, Boy said.
His brothers tried to talk him into abandoning his radical ideology but to no avail. “They even reported him to the National Counterterrorism Agency [BNPT] two months ago,” Boy said, without elaborating.
The BNPT, however, denied that it had ever received report on Sultan. “Who said that? There is no such report. We never received any report about it,” BNPT head Suhardi Alius told The Jakarta Post.
Sultan’s case highlights the threat of online radicalization in Indonesia, where around 4 percent of the population have a favorable view of the IS group, according to a 2015 survey by the Pew Research Center.
In August, an 18-year-old tried to kill a priest in a church in North Sumatra. He was said to have been inspired by an attack on a church in Rouen, France, in which a priest was killed and a parishioner wounded by IS militants.
Before carrying out his attack, Sultan told his family that he had to go to Jakarta for a job interview and left home early in the morning with a backpack, in which he is believed to have carried weapons.
Sultan is thought to have attacked the police because JAD, the faction most loyal to IS in the country, regards policemen as infidels, said National Police chief Gen. Tito Karnavian.
“The police are regarded as infidels because we are on the offense against them,” Tito said in Siloam Hospital, Tangerang, on Friday.
“It’s a pity that the victims are usually our [traffic police] officers in the field who aren’t routinely armed. In the future, we may give them weapons,” he added. Tito was visiting Comr. Effendi, the Tangerang Police chief, who was one of the victims, along with traffic policemen Chief Brig. Sukardi and First Insp. Bambang Heriadi.
The police chief further warned the public to be more aware about internet content because it had become one of the most effective ways of spreading radical views among young people.
“What we definitely have to watch for is online [communication]. Recruitment [by radical groups] is ongoing online. This means that we need to take preventive action so that our youth will not be recruited,” Tito said.
