Woman arrested over embassy bomb hoax

Indonesian police said today they had arrested a woman suspected of sending a hoax bomb threat that closed the British and Thai embassies in Jakarta.

Earlier, national police Chief General Da’I Bachtiar said the threat may have been the work of a person linked to Indonesia’s most wanted men – Malaysian terror suspects Azahari bin Husin and Noordin Mohamed Top.

But today, a Jakarta police spokesman said the threat was, in fact, based on a woman’s desire to keep her boyfriend – a security guard at the Thai embassy – in Jakarta.

Police identified the suspect as a 22-year-old woman called Zulfah and said she was arrested in western Jakarta.

“We have arrested the woman who sent the SMS,” Jakarta’s police spokesman Col Ciptono. The text message, warning of a bomb placed in Imam Bonjol street where both embassies are located, was sent to a police hotline.

Ciptono, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, said the suspect’s boyfriend had been planning to visit his home village in East Java province. She did not want him to go and believed that a bomb threat would mean he would be forced to stay in Jakarta.

Security was stepped up around both embassies and office blocks and hotels in the same neighbourhood amid fears the bomb threat could have been the work of terrorists.