Indonesia arrests more than a dozen in pre-Christmas terror sweep

JAKARTA: More than a dozen people have been arrested by Indonesian anti-terrorism police, authorities said on Monday, as they beef up security in the world’s biggest Muslim-majority country ahead of the Christmas and New Year holidays.

Police said they detained 13 suspected militants in separate, pre-emptive raids over the weekend across the Southeast Asian nation, which has long struggled with Islamic militancy. “As usual, we are conducting pre-emptive strikes. We move before they do and we arrest the groups we believe will potentially commit an act of terror,” national police chief Tito Karnavian said on Monday.

The arrests took place in South Sumatra, East Java and West Kalimantan over the weekend. One of the men arrested in Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-biggest city, was known to have gone to Syria in 2013 and has links to Abu Jandal, an influential Indonesian militant who fought with the Islamic State group in the Middle Eastern country, authorities said.

Another suspect was involved in a February terror attack in the Indonesian city of Bandung, where a pressure cooker bomb exploded in a park before a gun battle erupted nearby, leaving one militant dead.