Hoaxers 'will face terror charges'

Evi Mariani, Jakarta

Four bomb threats in Jakarta over the weekend have made the police take the issue seriously, with Jakarta Police chief Insp. Gen. Firman Gani promising to deal harshly with perpetrators of bomb hoaxes.

"We're still searching for the callers. Should we catch them, we shall charge them under the antiterrorism law for spreading terror among the public," he said on Monday.

Firman said his officers had identified some of the callers' numbers via the caller ID facility, but most were from mobile phone prepaid card numbers.

"It's not easy to track down such callers because anybody can buy a prepaid card and then throw it away later," he said.

Prepaid cards for cellular phones are sold freely and customers are neither required to fill in a form nor submit a copy of their ID card. Many cellular phone operators are currently competing to offer low-priced prepaid cards, starting from around Rp 20,000 (US$2.18).

However, Firman said, one of the callers used a fixed-line number that, according to state telecommunications company PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia (Telkom), was registered under the name of a notary in Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan.

At 11 p.m. on Sunday, Jakarta Police Headquarters received three bomb threats from unidentified men on its emergency hotline number 112.

The telephone operators, Second Brig. Irma and Second Brig. Vita, immediately contacted officers on duty, who went in search of the bombs with two police antiterror units and the bomb squad.

It took them seven hours before they declared the headquarters safe at 6 a.m.

Earlier on Sunday, at around 9:30 a.m., Plaza Bank Mandiri, Jl. Gatot Subroto, South Jakarta, received a telephoned bomb threat.

A police report said an employee working at the building received a text message on her mobile phone, saying there was a bomb planted in the building.

After hours of searching, the threat proved to be false.

On Friday, a telephone operator on the seventh floor of Plaza Bapindo, Jl. Sudirman, South Jakarta, received bomb threats at 9:30 a.m. The bomb squad did not find anything suspicious after hours of searching.

At 11:50 a.m. on the same day, an employee of PT Delta Grande, on the fourth floor of Wisma Metropolitan I, Jl. Sudirman, Central Jakarta, also took a bomb threat call. At 2:15 p.m., the bomb squad declared the building safe.