Munarman, whom the police identified only by his initial, was arrested at his house in a luxury residential area of South Tangerang, Banten, on Tuesday and was brought in to the Jakarta Police headquarters for questioning.

“The arrest was related to allegations of M’s involvement in terror acts that took place recently,” Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Ahmad Ramadhan said during a press briefing on Wednesday.

Ahmad did not specify the acts of terror in question, but during an earlier interview with KompasTV, he mentioned Munarman’s involvement in baiat (Muslim pledges of allegiance to a leader) at the Jakarta State Islamic University (UIN Jakarta), as well as in Medan, North Sumatra, and Makassar, South Sulawesi. The Makassar pledge, he claimed, was related to the Islamic State (IS).

Since the country’s last major set of terror attacks, which hit Surabaya in 2018 and killed dozens of people, a number of smaller, scattered attacks have occurred throughout the country. One of the latest was a church bombing in Makassar in late March that injured dozens and killed the two suicide bombers.

Ahmad said during the briefing that the police had searched Munarman’s residence and the FPI secretariat’s office in Petamburan, Central Jakarta, and had found bottles of “powder containing high concentrations of nitrate in the form of acetone, as well as bottles of triacetone triperoxide (TATP) liquid”. The potentially explosive substances bore similarities, Ahmad said, to ones discovered during the arrest of four alleged terrorists in Condet, East Jakarta, and Bekasi, West Java, in late March.

He said the police would continue investigating the chemicals and documents discovered during the search.

Popular

Is Indonesia really ready to embrace dual citizenship?

Tens of thousands seek better lives in Jakarta. But is the city losing its draw?

Elon Musk's Starlink granted licences to operate in Indonesia