Firearms belonging to Indonesian militant Dananjaya Erbening were confiscated by police on Aug 14. - PHOTO: JAWAPOS.COM
JAKARTA (The Straits Times/ANN): Indonesian police have uncovered illegal sales of firearms on at least two popular e-commerce platforms – some of which were falsely advertised as airguns to avoid detection – including one sale to an Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) supporter.
The two platforms are Tokopedia and Shopee, said the police. They are among the most popular e-commerce platforms in Indonesia.
The finding comes amid an ongoing investigation into Dananjaya Erbening, an employee of Indonesian state-owned railway company KAI. He was detained on Monday for possessing five assault rifles, 11 handguns, hundreds of live bullets and an ISIS flag at his home in Bekasi, a satellite town of the Indonesian capital Jakarta.
Some of the firearms were homemade and modified, while others were manufactured products.
Dananjaya, who is aged around 30 and has been a supporter of ISIS for the past 13 years, had plans to attack the mobile brigade headquarters of the Indonesian police, which houses temporary detention cells for terrorists during trials, and a few military bases.
“A total of 38 firearms sold online – assault rifles as well as handguns – have been confiscated since June. Some of them were related to terror activities, some were not,” the director of general crimes investigation, Chief Commissioner Hengki Haryadi, told reporters late on Friday afternoon.
There were also 18 cases of online sales involving airguns that were converted into firearms capable of firing live bullets, which could be just as lethal as manufactured firearms, the police said.
Eighteen weapons were made at a workshop in Semarang, Central Java. Some of Dananjaya’s firearms were sourced from this workshop via regular, professional courier services, the police said.
“We have arrested those who purchased these modified weapons (converted from airguns) and the people running the workshop,” Mr Hengki told a media briefing.
“This is a new phenomenon that requires increased vigilance. There is rampant circulation of CO2-powered airguns firing steel balls that have been upgraded to firearms firing bullets,” the chief commissioner added, pointing out that there are still many units out there “that we have not confiscated”.
The police’s general crime division is working with anti-terror squad Detachment 88 to pursue those illegally purchased weapons that might have reached the hands of militants and criminals.
The police also dismissed earlier reports about a police officer supplying weapons to Dananjaya, explaining that the policeman in question had bought the firearm that had been converted from an airgun from the same Semarang workshop and kept the weapon in his personal collection.
He is now under investigation as he is considered to have bought and used an illegal firearm, when he should have possessed only an officially issued weapon, said Hengki.
“Our investigation reveals he bought the weapon for a hobby... Further investigation is being carried out against him,” he added.
Sweeping changes to Indonesia’s anti-terror law that President Joko Widodo proposed in early 2016, and which Parliament ratified two years later, have boosted the authorities’ ability to counter terrorism.
The new law allows security authorities to crack down on potential terror activities in ways that the old law would not have accommodated, including pre-emptive arrests and the detention of terror suspects for longer periods of time, based only on preliminary leads. -- The Straits Times/ANN
