Central Java MUI Outlines Timeline Behind Islamic Boarding School Raid, Citing Intelligence Lapse

SUKOHARJO — Zainal Abidin Petir, a member of the Law and Human Rights Commission of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) in Central Java, has gathered accounts of the raid and search at Hamalatul Quran Islamic Boarding School in Sukoharjo regency. He said the police acted on inaccurate intelligence.

Zainal said the Central Java MUI had tasked him with collecting detailed information about the raid to establish what happened at the school, located in Dukuh Laban, Mojolaban district, Sukoharjo.

He travelled to Sukoharjo and gathered accounts from several parties, including the school’s management, local residents and investigators. He learned that the raid was part of an investigation into the burning of a noodle and pork restaurant in Parangjoro village, Grogol district, Sukoharjo. The restaurant was set alight in the early hours of 12 September 2026.

In connection with the case, the Central Java Police and Sukoharjo Police arrested a suspect identified by the initial S. He was detained at a house in Purbayan village, Baki district, Sukoharjo, on 19 October 2026. Based on information from S, police obtained the identity of another suspected arsonist, a man identified by the initial I.

Zainal said that, as the investigation developed, the Central Java Police and Sukoharjo Police raided and searched Hamalatul Quran Islamic Boarding School in the early hours of 27 October 2026. According to the accounts he collected, dozens of Mobile Brigade Corps (Brimob) personnel took part. “The Central Java Police Chief was already there at the time. He had arrived during the night, before the raid,” Zainal said in an interview on Tuesday, 3 November 2026.

Police did not find I at the school after carrying out the raid. “I suspect the Central Java Police Chief received information that was not valid,” Zainal said.

Zainal said the information he had gathered indicated that police had monitored the school before the raid. On one occasion, the father of a student visited the premises carrying a rucksack. “They thought the man was I, the informant [sic?]—the person they were looking for. They thought I had entered the boarding school, when it was actually a student’s parent,” Zainal said.

According to Zainal, the student’s father had only stopped by briefly. All the students, teachers and caretakers at the school are women. However, he also learned that one of the school’s female religious teachers is I’s wife. “So it seems the Police Chief received information that I, who is still on the wanted list, was at Hamalatul Quran Islamic Boarding School. But I had not been there for a long time and had never gone there,” he said.