U.S. Embassy receives 'al-Qaeda' threat

Friday, March 02, 2007
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The city police's Traffic Management Center (TMC) has again received a bomb threat against the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta from a person claiming to be a member of international terrorist network al-Qaeda.

Police said they received the same text messages from number 085229992xxx at 11:22 a.m. and 11:40 a.m. Monday.

The message said: "We will blow up the U.S. Embassy in 30 minutes time. Al-Qaeda."

Police sent two anti-terror squads to search both inside and outside the building (see photo), but found nothing.

The embassy received a similar bomb threat Saturday sent from a different cell phone number to TMC hot line 1717.

Two other bomb threats have been reported in the news this year: The first was against the Bank Indonesia building on Feb. 19 and the second against Kelapa Gading Shopping mall in North Jakarta on Tuesday.

Jakarta Police arrested last week a man in Ponorogo, East Java, who had phoned TMC to warn a bomb was going to go off in the Bank Indonesia building.

According to police, the man made the threat to express his deep disappointment in the country's banking system.

"The TMC number is there to expedite police response times, but some people are misusing the number to make threats," said Central Jakarta Police chief Sr. Comr. Heru Winarto on Thursday.(02)