Indonesian militants captured in recent police raids were planning a series of attacks including a Mumbai-style hotel siege targeting foreigners and an assault on the president at an independence day ceremony on August 17, police said on Friday. The men also planned to target US President Barack Obama, who is scheduled to visit the country later this year, officials said. “They planned to target Indonesian President (Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono), state officials and foreign guests attending the ceremony,” national police chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri told a press conference. The Indonesia militants “planned to launch a series of assassinations in Java and Jakarta with their specific target foreigners, especially Americans, and the Indonesian president,” he said. They also planned to lay siege to hotels, “copying what had occurred in Mumbai,” he said, adding that if the attack had succeeded the militants would have “declared Indonesia as an Islamic state.” The police chief was speaking at a briefing on raids carried out by counter-terror police after the discovery of a terrorist training facility in Aceh, in northern Sumatra island, in February. – Agencies Danuri said 58 terror suspects have been arrested and 13 people killed in the raids over the past three months. A security source involved in the investigation said that the attackers had planned to lay siege to the palace on Independence Day, staging a coup. A map of Singapore was found among the militants' possessions, Danuri said. Earlier on Friday, an expert on militants said that US President Barack Obama, who is due to visit Indonesia in June, was one of several suspected targets of the militants. Intelligence expert Mardigu Wowi Prasantyo, who is close to the police investigation, said books and documents found in the raids suggested the militants planned an attack on Obama, possibly during his visit. – Agencies “They did not say it, but this was evident in their books and documents, that the leader of America was their enemy and should be attacked whenever possible,” he told Reuters by phone. Obama, who spent part of his childhood in Jakarta, was expected to visit Indonesia in March but delayed his trip until mid-June so he could oversee the passage of the US health bill.
