Indonesian police kill suspect in Aceh wanted for beheadings of 3 Christian girls; 4 arrested

Indonesian police kill terrorist suspect in Aceh

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Indonesian police raided a home used by suspected terrorists Monday in the far western province of Aceh, fatally shooting a man allegedly involved in the beheadings of three Christian girls.

Two other suspects were arrested at the house in Cot Irie village on the outskirts of Banda Aceh, said Col. Esa Permadi, chief detective of Aceh police. Interrogations of the men led to another raid in which two more suspects were detained, he said.

Permadi identified the dead man as Enal Tao, a 38-year-old fugitive accused of involvement in several attacks in Poso in Central Sulawesi province, including the beheadings of three Christian girls in 2005. He said Enal also “actively assisted” Indonesians who joined terrorist training camps in the southern Philippines.

The raids follow the arrests of six terror suspects Sunday in Medan, capital of nearby North Sumatra province. It was not clear if Monday’s raids were related.

Those arrested Sunday included 35-year-old Abu Musa, a suspect in the 2004 attack on the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, and Yusuf Arifin, 25, who is said to have received militant training in the southern Philippines. The other four were wanted in connection with a failed plot to assassinate Indonesia’s president last year, police said.

The men are allegedly members of al-Qaida in Aceh, a splinter of Jemaah Islamiyah, the Southeast Asian offshoot of al-Qaida blamed for deadly bombings in Indonesia in recent years. The group was largely unknown until police announced they broke up a paramilitary training camp in February set up in a remote part of Aceh.

Police have since killed eight alleged militants in raids in Aceh and on the main Indonesian island of Java. More than 40 others have been arrested.

The greatest prize for authorities so far has been Dulmatin, a master bomb-maker shot dead last month near the capital, Jakarta. He was wanted for making and priming one of the bombs that killed 202 people in a nightclub strip on Indonesia’s Bali island in 2002, and had been assumed to be hiding in the southern Philippines.