JAKARTA, Indonesia — The female would-be suicide bomber arrested last week one day before her planned attack in Indonesia’s capital says she took orders from an Indonesian fighting with the Islamic State group in Syria.
Dian Yulia Novi and her husband Nur Solihin were among four suspected militants arrested on Saturday after police detected their plot to bomb a guard-changing ceremony at the presidential palace. A neighborhood on the outskirts of Jakarta was evacuated after a bomb was found.
The former migrant worker said in an interview with TVOne that she learned about jihad on social media. She was influenced by articles from an Islamic website and Aman Abdurrahman, a radical cleric serving a nine-year sentence.
Novi said she communicated with the Indonesian IS figher, Bahrun Naim, through the encrypted chat app Telegram.
