Ahead of the elections, Indonesian police detain 27 suspected militants connected to extremist organizations

A statewide crackdown is underway as Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, gets ready for elections in 2024, and police said on Saturday that they had detained at least 27 suspected militants who may have ties to extremist organizations that have been outlawed.

According to National Police spokesman Ahmad Ramadhan, the arrests were made on Friday in West Java, Central Sulawesi province, and Jakarta by the police’s elite Densus 88 counterterrorism team.

Densus 88 spokeswoman Aswin Siregar told The Associated Press, “We are still investigating and questioning all those arrested in search for other possible suspects.”

He added the majority of those detained are thought to be members of Jemmaah Anshorut Daulah, or JAD, a local militant organization connected to the Islamic State (IS).

18 suspected extremists who had been detained since October 2 were questioned before the arrests were made, according to Ramadhan.

Ramadhan promptly played down certain local media reports that said the detained were part of a conspiracy by militants to disrupt the elections in February 2024.

He said, “As of right now, there is no indication of an increase in terrorist threats ahead of next year’s elections.” “This is a component of our efforts to deter potential terrorist acts in the nation.”

2018 saw a court prohibit JAD. Densus 88 has been relentless in its assault on militants, which has crippled the organization. In 2017, the US designated JAD as a terrorist organization.

The group was behind a number of deadly suicide bombings in Indonesia, including an attack in 2016 that killed eight people in Jakarta and a series of suicide bombings in 2018 in Surabaya, the country’s second-largest city, that killed thirteen people when two families, including girls as young as nine and twelve, detonated themselves at churches and a police station.

On February 14 of the next year, Indonesia will have concurrent elections for the legislature and the presidency.

Following the bombings on Bali, a resort island, in 2002 that claimed the lives of 202 people, mostly Western and Asian tourists, Indonesia began to tighten down on terrorists.

assaults by militants against foreigners have mostly been supplanted in Indonesia in recent years by smaller, less lethal assaults against the government, primarily against the police and anti-terrorism forces.