Police still pursuing 2 individuals believed to be ‘teachers’ of E. Java bombing terrorists

While Indonesia is still dealing with the shock of the horrific bombings that took place in Surabaya on Sunday and Monday, police are still searching for two people they believe acted as teachers to all three families involved in the attacks.

“We are still looking, they are being pursued by our colleagues in the field,” said East Java Police Chief Machfud Arifin at a press conference in Surabaya today as quoted by Detik.

Police identified one of the individuals as an Indonesian man named Abu Bakr (not to be confused with Islamic State militant leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi). According to Machfud, Abu Bakr taught radical terrorist ideology to the families but did not give any details regarding what, if any, role he had in planning or undertaking the attacks.

Police say that Dita Oeprianto, the father of the family behind the suicide bomb attacks on three churches in Surabaya on Sunday (along with his wife and four children aged 8-18), also acted as a teacher and leader of the Surabaya chapter of Jemaah Ansarut Daulah (JAD), a terrorist network with ties to the Islamic State.

A group of JAD Surabaya members included the families involved in the suicide bombing at Surabaya Police headquarters on Monday morning and an explosion at an apartment complex in Sidoarjo on Sunday night. 

According to officials, the group would meet at Dita’s house once a week to study radical theology and plan terrorist actions. Police say they have already arrested 13 people alleged to have ties to the group but said they are still pursuing several more including Abu Bakr.

Yesterday, the East Java Police said they had tracked down seven people suspected of having a connection to the terrorist attacks or the group behind them, two of whom were killed for attacking officers.

The latest casualty count from the suicide bombings that took place at three different churches in Surabaya on Sunday morning now stands at 18.

Also on Sunday at around 9 pm, a homemade bomb prematurely exploded in the neighboring city of Sidoarjo in what the police have disturbingly described as another family affair, akin to the Surabaya church bombings. Three were killed in this incident.

As for the suicide bombing at the Surabaya Police HQ on Monday morning, the police confirmed that it was also carried out by one family, this time consisting of five members. The father, 50-year-old Tri Murtiono, took his wife and three children, strapped them with homemade bombs, and blew themselves up at the entrance gate to the police station. Miraculously, the youngest member of the family, an 8-year-old girl, survived and is now being treated as a key witness.

The latest casualty count across the five explosion sites in East Java, including a premature explosion in an apartment housing another family of suspected terrorists in the city of Sidoarjo, stands at at least 28 dead and 57 injured.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the suicide bombings via its propaganda agency Amaq, calling them “martyrdom attacks”. Police say that the bombings, as well as last week’s prison riot in Depok, were all done based upon instructions from the terror group’s central command.