JAKARTA: Indonesian police have arrested the alleged fundraiser of a failed plot to bomb the Myanmar embassy in the capital Jakarta in May, an official said yesterday.
Authorities were also investigating whether Muhammad Syaiful Sabani, detained in the central Javanese city of Yogyakarta on Friday, is linked to a recent bomb attack on a Buddhist temple in the capital, police said. Both the embassy plot and temple bombing highlighted growing anger in Muslim-majority Indonesia at the plight of the persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar, where most of the population is Buddhist.
The police’s elite anti-terror squad arrested Sabani in a car park near a hotel in Yogyakarta, national police spokesman Ronny Sompie, said. Sompie said a second man was arrested along with Sabani and police were investigating whether he was linked to the embassy plot.
Police foiled the plot on May 2 when they detained two men with a backpack holding five pipe bombs, who had allegedly been planning to launch an attack the following day.
AFP
