AN Indonesian terrorist jailed for helping build the bomb used in the 2004 attack on Australia’s Jakarta embassy has been arrested again.
Heri Sigu Samboja, better known as Sogir, was one of three men arrested in a series of police raids in Central Java this week. His arrest comes just months after his release from jail.
Police also arrested Abdullah Sunata, Indonesia’s most wanted man and a key recruiter for a terrorist group uncovered in Aceh earlier this year. They also arrested another suspect and shot dead a fourth.
Samboja, 28, is a graduate of a Jemaah Islamiah religious school who had bomb-making training under terrorist masterminds Noordin Mohammad Top and Azhari Husin in 2004.
Later that year he helped assemble the massive car bomb that exploded outside Australia’s Jakarta embassy, killing 10. He was arrested weeks later and was sentenced to seven years’ jail in 2005. Authorities believe he sparked a friendship with Sunata in prison before he was released earlier this year.
Sunata, 31, took up the jihadi cause in 1999 and quickly rose to become a leader of militant group KOMPAK. It’s believed he helped Dulmatin and fellow Bali bomber Umar Patek escape to the Philippines in the wake of the 2002 attacks that killed 202 people. Top later approached him to take part in the Australian embassy bombing but he declined.
Sunata was arrested in 2005 and sentenced to seven years’ prison for sheltering Top but was released for good behaviour after serving less than three years. He immediately returned to his old ways, joining with Bali bombing mastermind Dulmatin to set up the Aceh group, an amalgam of several militant organisations. Authorities believe the group had been plotting to assassinate President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and stage Mumbai-style gun attacks on luxury hotels in Jakarta.
Police have arrested more than 60 people and killed more than a dozen believed to be involved with the group since February. The International Crisis Group’s Sidney Jones, one of the top experts on South-East Asian terrorism, said Sunata’s arrest was significant. “It’s an important catch and he was a known recruiter,” Dr Jones said.
“The problem is going to be that he recruited people while he was in prison so this time around they’re going to have to keep a very, very strict eye on him.” Top and Dulmatin were both killed in police raids in the past year. Azhari was killed in a 2005 raid. Umar Patek remains at large.
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