Small bomb wounds four in Jakarta

MetroTV and TVOne quoted witnesses as saying the explosive - delivered to the offices of the Islamic Liberal Network - was put in a hole carved into a heavy, 400-page book.

March 15, 2011 04:45 pm | Updated September 30, 2016 10:17 pm IST - JAKARTA

A small mail bomb addressed to a moderate Muslim leader exploded in Indonesia’s capital on Tuesday, wounding four people, local media reported.

MetroTV and TVOne quoted witnesses as saying the explosive - delivered to the offices of the Islamic Liberal Network - was put in a hole carved into a heavy, 400—page book.

They said it arrived with a note that asked Ulil Absar Abdallah, one of the group’s leaders, to write a preface that included a “list of people who should be killed because of their sins to Muslims.” He was not in the office when the bomb exploded.

Police could not immediately be reached for comment.

Indonesia, a secular nation of 237 million people, has been hit by a string of terrorist attacks blamed on the al—Qaeda—linked militant group Jemaah Islamiyah since 2002, when suicide bombings on Bali island left 202 people dead, many of them foreign tourists.

Police say a new terrorist cell discovered just over a year ago has shifted tactics, targeting the country’s moderate Muslim leaders like President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his security forces.

The militants accuse Mr. Yudhoyono of being a lackey of the West in the crackdown on terrorism that has resulted in the arrests, convictions and imprisonment of hundreds of suspects.

Abdallah, who joined Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party a year ago, told MetroTV that he thought the attack was motivated by politics, not religion. He did not elaborate.

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