JAKARTA LIFE'S STYLE

Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam Governor, Irwandi Yusuf, stated that terrorists plan to set Aceh as their base of operations in Southeast Asia. The move has been detected since last year.

"Our intelligence has detected that they will set up a base in Southeast Asia, but we just took an action on it now," said Irwandi in his press conference at Borobudur Hotel, Jakarta, Tuesday.

Irwandi explained that the terrorist recruitment started by finding young men to be sent to the Gaza Strip. After the recruitment, the young men were taken to Java for departure. However, since the Gaza incident was concluded before their departure, their trip was cancelled.

An anonymous organization then took over these people. "Eight people from Aceh were taken over by organization X and were trained in Java. This is the start of their movement toward Aceh."

According to Irwandi, the terrorists have been apprehended while still in training. "This is still the initial training phase, like for shooting practices."

About the discovery of Malaysian and Indonesian military uniform attributes, Irwandi stated that it is irrelevant to the Indonesian and Malaysian militaries. "The similar patterns can be bought anywhere. This doesn't signify the involvement of Indonesian or Malaysian militaries."

The fact that the terrorists' firearms could be smuggled to Indonesia is due to the weak monitoring on some points along the Aceh coastline. The Aceh coastline is 18,000 km. Whereever there's a weak point, the firearms could come through.

During the press conference, Irwandi repeatedly underlined that the apprehended terrorists have no connection to the Free Aceh Movement (GAM). According to Irwandi, former members of the GAM were in coordination with the Indonesian military for the raid today. "This has no connection with GAM at all. Instead, GAM cooperated with the Indonesian military to detect these terrorists."

The statement was confirmed by a former member of GAM, Muzakir Manaf, who stated that no member of GAM was involved in the terrorist network. "We've confirmed this to the district government and GAM's network. The result is that no one (from GAM) was involved."

Muzakir also stated that GAM will cooperate with the National Police to provide any necessary information. (KOMPAS)

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