Manhunt Under Way in Jakarta for Killers of Police Officer

By I Made Sentana and Joko Hariyanto

JAKARTA, Indonesia—A massive manhunt in under way in Indonesia for  four men who are suspected to have gunned down a police officer from their motorcycles in Jakarta late Tuesday night, in what one terrorism expert said may have been retaliation for recent anti-terrorism raids.

The uniformed policeman was the fourth policeman shot to death in Indonesia in recent weeks.

Indonesia suffered large-scale bombings in the early 2000′s, with the most deadly incident being the 2002 Bali bombings that killed more than 200 people, mostly foreign tourists. The country launched counter-terrorism efforts that have diminished the capacity of the terror networks. Now the terror networks tend to be smaller cells. This summer, the police launched a series of raids in which may suspected terrorists were killed and others arrested.

The terrorists want to turn the world's largest Muslim country into an Islamic state that abides by the Shariah law, a strict set of marriage, dietary and other rules that regulate the lives of conservative followers of Islam. The country has tried to beat back its image as being unsafe because of terrorism, which has led, for example, some musicians, most recently Aerosmith, to avoid it. The association of Indonesia with terrorism can be a factor foreign businesses weigh in deciding whether to locate here or expand operations.

Police say it's too early to know whether Tuesday's killing of the police officer is payback for this summer's raids. The bullets that killed the police officer Tuesday in Jakarta's business district were of the same caliber as those used to kill another police officer on the outskirts of Jakarta last month.

But Nasril Abbas, a former member of al-Qaeda's regional affiliate Jemaah Islamiyah who decided to work with police to help track down some of his former comrades, said the latest shooting looks to him like part of a pattern of revenge killings.

"This is definitely part of terror actions,"  Mr. Abbas said.

Tuesday night's shooting involved four unknown men riding on two motorcycles who intercepted the police officer – Sukardi, who like many Indonesians, only used one name —  in front of the Anti-Graft Committee's building at Rasuna Said Street, Jakarta police spokesman Rikwanto told reporters, quoting reports by witnesses. The officer was  on a motorcycle escorting a convoy of six trucks carrying elevator parts from Jakarta's Tanjung Priok Port.

"After  intercepting him, the four men shot him," Mr. Rikwanto said. He added that one of the four men then took Mr. Sukardi's pistol before they rode away on their motorcycles.

On August 16, two on-duty police officer were shot dead by two unidentified men on motorcycles in the south western outskirt of Jakarta.  A week earlier, a policeman was also shot dead around the same area at dawn, just after he left home for work.

Another police officer was critically injured last month  after being shot by unknown man on a motorcycle.

Santoso, the leader of the militant group Mujahidin Indonesia Timur and former member of the Jemaah Islamiyaah, in July posted a YouTube video in which he encouraged Muslims to wage jihad, or holy war, against Indonesia's anti-terrorism police. The video was removed by the website shortly after its posting.