Police are investigating Abu Bakar Bashir's alleged links
to seven terrorist suspects arrested in South Jakarta.
Links between the nest of terrorists spectacularly busted by Indonesian security forces in Aceh and radical Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir are continuing to emerge.
Residents in Pasar Minggu, South Jakarta, where seven terrorist suspects were arrested on Thursday evening say that Bashir often visited the group.
A resident said the alleged former spiritual head of the deadly Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist network visited “often.”
Police are understood to be investigating Bashir’s links to alleged terrorist Abu Tholat.
Abu Tholut was thought to have been the target of a 2003 raid in Semarang, Central Java, that supposedly pointed to Bashir’s alleged JI connections.
Bashir has denied any association with the man, describing him as a militant from an armed group in Aceh.
Police in recent months have killed or captured dozens of suspects in connection with the paramilitary training camp in Aceh’s mountainous Jalin Jantho region.
The arrests could be part of an expected major police operation against alleged terrorists throughout Indonesia.
