Indonesian police foiled planned attacks on Danish Embassy, security forces: report

Indonesia foils plot on Danish Embassy: report

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesia’s most wanted terror suspect had been planning attacks on the Danish Embassy and a police ceremony before his arrest, media reports and officials said Friday. Bomb-making material and revolvers were seized from his rented home.

Abdullah Sunata and two of his aides were taken into custody Wednesday following a series of coordinated raids in Central Java province.

Tito Karnavian, who heads the anti-terror squad, said Sunata allegedly wanted to bomb the Danish Embassy over anger about a Danish newspaper’s publication of cartoons depicting Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, The Jakarta Globe newspaper reported.

Officials refused to confirm that Friday, saying only that an unnamed European mission had been a target. But members of the Danish Security and Intelligence Service were heading to Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, to help reinforce security at their embassy.

“There is still a general terror threat against Denmark that has been heightened by militant extremist groups’ high priority of Denmark as a terror target,” said Jakob Scharf, head of the agency.

“The republication of the Muhammad cartoons in February 2008 means a sharpened focus on Denmark and Danish interests abroad as a terror target among leading militant Islamists abroad,” he said in a statement.

National police spokesman Maj. Gen. Edward Aritonang told reporters Sunata had been planning a July 1 attack on a high-profile police ceremony. Among those scheduled to attend were President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and the country’s police chief.

Sunata is accused of helping set up a new terror network made up of Islamist militants from several groups with ties to the Middle East and the Philippines. Authorities found a cache of M-16 assault rifles, revolvers and thousands of rounds of ammunition at their jihadi training camp in Aceh in February.

They also said they uncovered plans to launch Mumbai-style terror strikes and to kill President Yudhoyono and other high-profile targets during August independence day celebrations.

More than 70 suspected members of the network have been killed or captured in raids that followed.

Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, has been hit by a series of suicide bombings since Oct. 12, 2002, when two nightclubs on the resort island of Bali were attacked by members of the regional terrorist network Jemaah Islamiyah. More than 260 people have died, many of them foreign tourists.

Associated Press Writer Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen contributed to this report.