Tito Karnavian said Hendro Fernando, an intermediary funnelling terror funding from Syria to extremist groups in Indonesia and with links to the Jakarta attack, confessed to plotting an attack on the Jakarta airport, an international school or Bali after he was arrested with nine guns a day after the Jakarta attack.

Inspector general Tito told a conference on Mapping Terrorism that the stolen guns seized during his arrest were destined for Central Sulawesi’s militant East Indonesia Mujahidin (MIT).

The group is led by the country’s most wanted terrorist fugitive, Santoso, who has pledged allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakar al-Baghdadi.

Hendro was one of 40 suspected terrorists arrested after the January 14 attack on central Jakarta in which eight people were killed, four of them gunmen involved in the strike which targeted a Starbucks, traffic police booth and popular shopping mall.

… Rohan Gunaratna, a Singapore-based international terrorism analyst, said Indonesia now had 22 identified “threat groups that have pledged allegiance to Abu Bakar al Baghdadi and Islamic State”, and that similar pledges had been made by groups in the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand.