JAKARTA: The student suspected of detonating blasts that injured dozens of people at a mosque in Indonesia’s capital last week was motivated by vengeance and inspired by attacks carried out by white supremacists and neo-Nazis, police said on Tuesday.
The blasts, which hit a mosque at a school complex in the capital Jakarta’s Kelapa Gading area during Friday prayers, left 96 people injured.
Police said on Tuesday that seven homemade explosives had been found by Indonesian authorities in and around the mosque, some of them in Coca-Cola cans.
Some bombs were triggered via remote control and some via fuse, and three did not explode, they said. Police said they also found a toy firearm at the scene with inscriptions, one of which read “vengeance.”
Last week, police said the suspect was a 17-year-old student at an adjacent school. Jakarta police chief Asep Edi Suheri did not name the suspect on Tuesday, referring to him as a “child facing the law.”
The alleged perpetrator was a lone wolf motivated by vengeance and loneliness, said Mayndra Eka Wardhana, an official at the Indonesian police anti-terror unit. He said the suspect had been inspired by attacks carried out by neo-Nazi and white supremacist figures and had joined a social media community glorifying grisly violence, but that he did not appear to subscribe to a specific ideology or be part of any militant network. Police cited the perpetrators of shootings such as the 2019 attack at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in the United States, as possible inspirations for the blasts.
“That inspired the alleged perpetrator,” Mayndra said. “He felt there was no place to share his complaints, neither with his family nor school.” The suspect, who sustained a head injury at the time of the explosions, is recovering after undergoing surgery.
Suspect in Indonesia mosque bombing was inspired by past mass killings, police say
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Suspect in Indonesia mosque bombing was inspired by past mass killings, police say
- The alleged perpetrator was a lone wolf motivated by vengeance and loneliness, said Mayndra Eka Wardhana, an official at the Indonesian police anti-terror unit
- He said the suspect had been inspired by attacks carried out by neo-Nazi and white supremacist figures
Lawsuit challenges Trump administration’s ending of protections for Somalis
- The lawsuit cites a series of statements Trump has made describing Somalis as “garbage” and “low IQ people” who “contribute nothing.”
BOSTON: Immigrant rights advocates filed a lawsuit on Monday seeking to stop US President Donald Trump’s administration from next week ending legal protections that allow nearly 1,100 Somalis to live and work in the United States. The lawsuit, brought by four Somalis and two advocacy groups, challenges the US Department of Homeland Security’s decision to end Temporary Protected Status for Somali immigrants, whom Trump has derided in public remarks. Outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in January announced that TPS for Somalis would end on March 17, arguing that Somalia’s conditions had improved, despite fighting continuing between Somali forces and Al-Shabab militants. The plaintiffs, who include the groups African Communities Together and Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, in the lawsuit filed in Boston federal court argue the move was procedurally flawed and driven by a discriminatory, predetermined agenda.
The lawsuit cites a series of statements Trump has made describing Somalis as “garbage” and “low IQ people” who “contribute nothing.”
The plaintiffs said the administration is ending TPS for Somalia and other countries due to unconstitutional bias against non-white immigrants, not based on objective assessments of country conditions.
“The termination of TPS for Somalia is racism masking as immigration policy,” Omar Farah, executive director at the legal group Muslim Advocates, said in a statement.
DHS did not respond to a request for comment. It has previously said TPS was “never intended to be a de facto amnesty program.”
TPS is a form of humanitarian immigration protection that shields eligible migrants from deportation and allows them to work. Under Noem, DHS has moved to end TPS for a dozen countries, sparking legal challenges. The administration on Saturday announced plans to pursue an appeal at the US Supreme Court in order to end TPS for over 350,000 Haitians. It also wants the high court to allow it to end TPS for about 6,000 Syrians.
SOMALI COMMUNITY TARGETED
Somalia was first designated for TPS in 1991, with its latest extension in 2024. About 1,082 Somalis currently hold TPS, and 1,383 more have pending applications, according to DHS. Somalis in Minnesota in recent months had become a target of Trump’s immigration crackdown, with officials pointing to a fraud scandal in which many people charged come from the state’s large Somali community. The Trump administration cited those fraud allegations as a basis for a months-long immigration enforcement surge in Democratic-led Minnesota, during which about 3,000 immigration agents were deployed, spurring protests and leading to the killing of two US citizens by federal agents.
In November, Trump announced he would end TPS for Somalis in Minnesota, and a month later said he wanted them sent “back to where they came from.”
The US Department of State advises against traveling to Somalia, citing crime and civil unrest among numerous factors.
