S'pore govt confirms arrest of S'porean over bomb plot
Thu, Jul 03, 2008
AFP
SINGAPORE said on Thursday that one of its nationals was arrested in Indonesia in a sweep in which 10 suspected militants linked to the extremist Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) group were detained.
'We have been in communication with our Indonesian counterparts. We can confirm that a Singaporean has been arrested by the Indonesian authorities,' a spokesman for the Ministry of Home Affairs said.
Several Indonesian newspapers had reported that one of the suspects was a Singaporean.
The ministry spokesman did not identify the arrested Singaporean but said it was not Mas Selamat bin Kastari, the alleged leader of JI's Singapore operations who escaped from a detention centre in the city-state in February.
Indonesian police said one of the suspects was a bomb-making expert associated with Kastari. They did not name the suspects or reveal details of their alleged plot to bomb targets in Indonesia.
The suspects had also been involved in the attempted murder of a Christian priest in 2005, police said.
The arrests came in the South Sumatra provincial capital of Palembang, where police said they discovered a bomb cache. -- AFP
