Indonesia | Court sends Singapore rocket plot militants to prison

Suspected militants attend their sentencing hearing at East Jakarta District Court in Jakarta yesterday

Six suspected Islamic militants who Indonesian police accused of plotting to fire a rocket at downtown Singapore from a nearby island were sentenced to prison yesterday on charges of harboring other extremists.

Judge Tarigan Mudalimbong said there wasn’t enough evidence to prove the rocket plot.

Instead the court found the militants guilty of hiding two Chinese Uighurs who were trying to join an extremist group in Poso on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi and of setting up a jihadi training camp.

The six men were arrested last year on Batam island, about 25 kilometers southeast of Singapore. Police said instant messaging chats between them and Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian fighting with the Islamic State group in Syria, indicated they planned to fire a rocket at the predominantly Chinese city-state.

Naim has been linked to numerous plots and attacks in Indonesia, including a May 24 double suicide bombing in Jakarta that killed three police officers and the two bombers.

Mudalimbong said the six men had pledged allegiance to Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and set up a jihadi training camp in Batam in an attempt to expand their extremist group, which was known as Katibah Gonggong Rebus.

The group’s leader, 32-year-old Gigih Rahmad Dewa, was sentenced to four years in prison and the other men were each sentenced to three years.

Police were tipped to the whereabouts of the militants on Batam by another Chinese Uighur who had been arrested on suspicion of plotting to attack Jakarta’s minority Christian governor and minority Shiite Muslims. AP