Islamic State-linked Suspects Arrested in Indonesia’s Papua Region Allegedly Targeted Bishop

June 2, 2021

Twelve suspected Islamic militants taken into custody in a southern district of Indonesia’s troubled Papua region had planned to attack a local archbishop and police stations there, authorities said Tuesday.

The suspects arrested in Papua’s Merauke regency on Friday and Sunday were linked to a cell of Jamaah Ansharut Daulah, an Indonesian militant network affiliated with the so-called Islamic State (IS) group, police said.

Indonesian authorities had blamed JAD for suicide attacks that targeted churches in other parts of the Muslim-majority country in March 2021 and May 2018.

“The targets were the bishop and police stations in Merauke,” Untung Sangaji, Merauke police chief, told BenarNews.

Untung said church officials told police that one suspect had entered the St. Frasiskus Xaverius cathedral, home to the Merauke Archbishop, with a backpack believed to contain explosives. But Archbishop Petrus Canisius Mandagi was not home at the time, Untung said.

The population of Papua, a region located at the far-eastern end of Indonesia, is mainly Melanesian and Christian. The region is home to a separatist insurgency that has simmered for decades but become more intense lately.

On Monday, national police spokesman Inspector Gen. Argo Yuwono said the suspected Islamic militants arrested in the past few days were not native Papuans, but migrants from Java and Sulawesi islands who had lived in Papua for some time.

Argo said officers confiscated chemical materials, air rifles, machetes and arrows from the suspects.

The suspects were linked to the JAD group in the city of Makassar on Sulawesi Island, said Aswin Azhar Siregar, head of operations at the police Densus 88 anti-terrorism unit.

Muh Taufiqurrohman, a senior researcher at the Center for the Study of Radicalism and Deradicalization (PAKAR), said the presence of IS-linked militants in Papua dated to 2018. At the time, a group of 14 militants from Java, Borneo, and Sulawesi islands came to Papua in search a safe location for training. They had moved from Timika to Merauke to escape a counter-terrorism operation by security forces there, Taufiqurrohman said.

Indigenous people who are Muslims, even those who espouse more puritan forms of Islam, “are ideologically different and less supportive of JAD actions,” he said.