Militants Abort Indonesian Terror Attack

Islamic Militants Reconsidered Plot At Last Minute After Realizing Most Victims Would Be Muslims

(AP)  Islamic militants aborted a planned bombing attack on a cafe at the last minute in western Indonesia after realizing many of the victims would have been Muslims, police said.

Ten men were arrested on Sumatra Island and 22 explosive devices were seized, many packed with bullets to maximize the impact of the planned blasts, said police spokesman Maj. Gen. Abubakar Nataprawira on Thursday.

Some of the men rounded up said they initially planned to attack Westerners at Kafe Bedudel, in the hilly Sumatran resort town of Bukittinggi, even placing three timed explosives inside, a senior police officer who took part in the arrests told The Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

But they decided too many Muslims would be killed and instead planned to choose a target in the capital, Jakarta, said the police officer, who refused to elaborate.

The arrests highlighted the lingering threat in Indonesia, which has been hit by a string of suicide bombings in recent years, including the 2002 Bali nightclubs attacks that thrust the world's most populous Muslim nation onto the front lines in the war on terrorism.

Many of the 240 people killed in those blasts, blamed on the regional militant network Jemaah Islamiyah, were foreign tourists.

Citing improvements in security, the United States lifted a travel warning early this year that had been in place since 2000 and there were no immediate plans to reverse that decision.

"The Indonesian government's response to the threat has improved," said Tristram Perry, the public diplomacy officer at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta. "If anything, these busts validate the lifting of the ban."

The latest arrests began in the Sumatran village of Sekayu when police captured 35-year-old Singaporean terror suspect Abu Hazam, who allegedly met with Osama bin Laden on several occasions and received training in Afghanistan, TVOne quoted anti-terror police as saying.

"He admitted giving bomb-making training to a number of Palembang residents implicated with the terror network," said Nataprawira.

The man, also known as Omar, tipped police off to the whereabouts of two other suspects, Abdul Rahman and an unidentified alleged bomb-maker, who were arrested Monday, he said. Six others were netted Wednesday and a seventh before dawn Thursday.

All but one of the men were flown to the capital, their faces covered by black masks as they disembarked from the police aircraft.

[reptilian96]

FOX NEWS discovered the presence of a massive spy ring inside the United States run by the government of Israel. This seems a harsh gratitude from a nation which obtains 10% of its annual budget from the American taxpayer, $3+ billion a year. Over the years, American taxpayers have been required to send Israel more than four times what the US spent to go to the moon.

[downsteamjim]

To brianbwb: Not only is Bin Laden CIA, he is actually Obama''s father and Chaney''s love child. Isn''t making up ''facts'' fun.

[brianbwb-2009]

There are very few places in that country, aside from Bali, with all the tourism, that a "terrorist" attack wouldn''t hurt more Muslims than anyone else, even in the Batak region of North Sumatra, there are more Muslim Javanese, and Muslim Batak than Christian Batak.

This is indicative that the planners are not Indonesian, and since Bin Laden is CIA, it is likely that the CIA is planning to invade yet another OPEC member.