Terrorists in Indonesia called to exploit the pandemic
Having lost influence in the past few months, Islamic State (ISIS) is urging its sympathizers to take advantage of the Coronavirus pandemic’s disruption and launch renewed attacks around the world. In Indonesia, recent raids conducted by counter-terrorism police shows a startling amount of ammunition being seized.
According to ICC, terrorism experts say the 2,300 rounds of ammunition, all of it for assault rifles and other service weapons used by the police and military, is the most Indonesian militants are known to have had in their possession in almost two decades.
Three suspects allegedly belonging to the ISIS-linked Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD) were arrested on April 26 by the Detachment 88 counterterrorism unit in the Surabaya suburb of Sidoarjo, along with large number of weapons.
A day later, three more militants were captured by police and reportedly kept the possession of an additional 2,000 rounds of ammunition near the Banten province capital of Serang, west of Jakarta.
While in general terrorism activities have been low since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, some terrorist groups did seize this opportunity to secretly recruit and train their militants, to fight against religious minorities.
