Indonesia arrests over ‘cyanide plot’ against police

INDONESIA yesterday arrested 16 terror suspects who planned to carry out a mass cyanide poisoning against police, according to the national police spokesman.

We rounded them up in a four-day operation last week. They planned to poison police personnel using cyanide,” Col Boy Rafli Amar said.

“Besides poisoning food at police station canteens, they also planned to inject the poison into mineral water bottles,” he said, adding that the suspects revealed the plot during police interrogation.

“This is a new model of terror attack.”

Police confiscated cyanide and “pen guns” — guns altered to look like pens — in a raid in Jakarta, said Col Amar.

Media correspondents say police, who are leading a security crackdown, are increasingly being targeted.

Of the latest arrests, seven were made in Jakarta, two in Pekalongan, two in East Kalimantan, two in Central Sulawesi and one in Bandung, Col Amar said.

Some of those arrests were based on information obtained from confessions of people captured after two police were killed in Central Sulawesi last month.

Col Amar was quoted by the Jakarta Globe as saying the suspects were involved in several different terror plots, with those arrested in Jakarta accused of planning to poison police with cyanide.

In recent months, police have arrested dozens of suspects, allegedly part of a new militant cell behind a series of recent incidents, including book bombs that were sent to Muslim moderates and counter-terrorism officials. The cell was linked to an April suicide bomb attack in a prayer room at a police compound in Cirebon in West Java.

Police also foiled a bid to set off a massive bomb near a Christian church on the outskirts of Jakarta at Easter. No one was killed in those incidents.

Indonesia has been rocked by a series of attacks staged by regional terror network Jemaah Islamiyah in recent years, including the 2002 Bali bombings which killed 202 people.