Student arrested for bomb possesion

Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Police have arrested a third suspect in connection to eight bombs that were found at a hotel room in Central Jakarta on Saturday, Jakarta Police chief Insp. Gen. Sofjan Jacoeb announced on Monday.

Sofjan said police seized the suspect, named Rendi, who claimed to be a university student in Jakarta, during a raid on Sunday afternoon carried out by the police's anti-terrorist squad.

"The three suspects are currently under police investigation at Jakarta Police Headquarters," Sofjan told reporters.

Police had arrested two suspects, named Kesman, 40, a former journalist of Neraca daily and Yupiter Adventius Koeang, 30, who also claimed to be a student of Jayabaya University, over the possession of eight homemade bombs found in room No.105 in Hotel Mega on Jl. Proklamasi, where both had stayed as guests for three days.

The bombs were brought from Ambon and assembled in Jakarta.

The suspects, however, remained silent about the target of the bombs.

As for Friday's bomb attack on the front yard of Petra church in Koja, North Jakarta, Sofjan said the police were still tracking down three other suspects, identified as Hilal, Arianto Aris and another unidentified suspect.

The police had arrested two suspects in the church bomb attack, Wahyu Handoko, 20 and Ujang Arif, 17. They admitted that they were aiming to kill Rev. Diane Akyuwen, who had previously worked in Maluku.

The police have so far identified the Ambon-based Mujahedin group as being involved in the church bomb attack.

"The (Mujahedin) group is allegedly chasing after rival groups who had fled to Jakarta," Sofjan said.

The Mujahedin group took part in the destruction of churches in Maluku in 1999.

Meanwhile, Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Anton Bachrul Alam, citing reports from the police intelligence unit, warned that there had been strong signals of efforts to disrupt security and order in the capital ahead of the fasting month of Ramadhan, slated to begin on Nov. 17.

"Places of worship must increase their own security to prevent such crimes from recurring," he said, recalling a spate of bombings that damaged several churches in the capital on Christmas Eve last year.

Those cases remain unsolved until today.

Anton called on the public to help secure local places of worship and to immediately call the police if they found anything suspicious.