JAKARTA: Indonesian police arrested three people on Friday suspected of being linked to suicide bombings in Jakarta, as the Daesh claimed responsibility for the attacks that killed three police officers at a bus station and wounded 12 others.
The attack was the deadliest in Indonesia since January 2016, when eight people were killed, four of them attackers, after bombers and gunmen attacked the capital Jakarta.
After visiting the site of Wednesday’s attacks, President Joko Widodo said Indonesia needed to accelerate plans to strengthen anti-terrorism laws to prevent new attacks.
“If we make a comparison with other countries, they already have regulations to allow authorities to prevent (attacks) before they happen,” Widodo told a news conference.
The president said he had ordered the chief security minister to get the revisions done as soon as possible.
Long-standing plans to reform Indonesia’s 2003 anti-terrorism laws have been held up by opposition from some parties in parliament and concerns about individual rights.
The revisions would broaden the definition of terrorism and give police the power to detain suspects without trial for longer. The changes would allow police to arrest people for hate speech or for spreading radical content, as well as those taking part in para-military training or joining proscribed groups. Muhammad Syafi’i of the opposition Gerindra party, who chairs a committee deliberating the bill, said discussions should be completed this year but there were still outstanding issues such as ensuring checks and balances on the counter-terrorism agency. “This bill needs to be discussed in a cautious and comprehensive way because the purpose of all regulations in this country is to ensure they do not result in the slaughter of Indonesian people, ... but protect them,” Syafi’i told Reuters.
The Daesh group claimed responsibility for this week’s attacks. “The executor of the attack on the Indonesian police gathering in Jakarta was an Islamic State fighter,” the group’s news agency Amaq said.
Indonesia has suffered a series of mostly low-level attacks by Islamic State sympathizers in the past 17 months, but there are concerns that the sophistication is improving.
Police said Wednesday’s attack had targeted officers, using pressure cookers packed with explosives.
“The explosions were described by police on 24 May as ‘pretty big’, and the number of wounded and dead would suggest a still-crude but developing bomb-making capability for militants in Indonesia,” said Otso Iho, an analyst at Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center (JTIC).
Police have identified the suspected suicide bombers as two 30-year-old men from the West Java city of Bandung.
Indonesian police made three arrests on Friday in Bandung related to the attacks and said they had seized Islamic teachings, phones and other items during the raids, Yusri Yunus, head of public relations at West Java Police, said.
Indonesia makes arrests as Daesh claims Jakarta attacks
Indonesia makes arrests as Daesh claims Jakarta attacks
Trump insists he struck Iran on his own terms
- “We are now a nation divided between those who want to fight wars for Israel and those who just want peace and to be able to afford their bills and health insurance,” Marjorie Taylor Greene posted on X.
- Rubio himself doubled down on Tuesday after meeting with US House and Senate members, while insisting that “No, I told you this had to happen anyway”
WASHINGTON, United States: President Donald Trump and his team scrambled Tuesday to reclaim the narrative on why he decided to attack Iran, after his top diplomat suggested the US struck only after learning of an imminent Israeli strike.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio alarmed Democrats — who say only Congress can declare war — as well as many of Trump’s MAGA supporters on Monday when he said: “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action.”
“We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Rubio told reporters.
Administration officials quickly backpedalled, insisting Trump authorized the strikes because Tehran was not seriously negotiating an accord on limiting its nuclear ambitions, and the United States needed to destroy Iran’s missile capabilities.
“No, Marco Rubio Didn’t Claim That Israel Dragged Trump into War with Iran,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted Tuesday on X.
At an Oval Office meeting later with Germany’s chancellor, Trump went further, saying that “Based on the way the negotiation was going, I think they (Iran) were going to attack first. And I didn’t want that to happen.”
“So, if anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand.”
- Had to happen? -
Rubio himself doubled down on Tuesday after meeting with US House and Senate members, while insisting that “No, I told you this had to happen anyway.”
“The president made a decision. The decision he made was that Iran was not going to be allowed to hide... behind this ability to conduct an attack.”
Critics seized on the muddied messaging to accuse Trump of precipitating the country into a war without a clear rationale, without informing Congress — and without a clear idea of how it might end.
They noted that just two weeks ago, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pressed Trump again in Washington to take a hard line, in their seventh meeting since Trump’s return to power last year.
Some Republican allies rallied behind the president, with Senator Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, insisting that “No one pushes or drags Donald Trump anywhere.”
“He acts in the vital national security interest of the United States,” Cotton told the “Fox & Friends” morning show.
But as crucial US midterm elections approach that could see Republicans lose their congressional majority, Trump risks shedding supporters who had welcomed his pledge to end foreign military interventions.
“We are now a nation divided between those who want to fight wars for Israel and those who just want peace and to be able to afford their bills and health insurance,” Marjorie Taylor Greene, a top former Trump ally and a major figure in the populist and isolationist hard right, posted on X.
