MOSCOW, December 27 (Sputnik) —Indonesian police have arrested six people at the Jakarta’s Soekarno Hatta airport as they were attempting to fly to Syria to join the Islamic State group, reports AFP.
"After questioning, they admitted they planned to go to Istanbul via Doha and then continue to Syria to perform Islamic sharia," Herry Heriyawan, subdirector for crimes and violence at the Jakarta Police Headquarters said.
"We hope to find out more details from the organizer, including who funded the trip," he added.
The seventh person, according to the newspaper, was detained late Saturday for making fake passports for the six detained earlier.
A large number of Muslims around the world have been attracted towards the radical group, with an estimate of around 514 Indonesians having already left for Syria and Iraq to fight alongside other radicals, with around half of them students or migrant workers based in neighboring countries, reports AFP.
As reported by the Inquirer, the group “is issuing a bit of a siren song through social media, trying to attract people to their so-called caliphate,” FBI Director James Comey said. “And among the people they’re trying to attract are young women to be brides for these jihadis.”
“They’re seducing them with promises about how wonderful it will be,” said Mia Bloom, a professor of security studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. “They promise a sense of adventure, that their worries will be addressed.”
But as Assistant Attorney General John Carlin said, “We need to make clear that if you want to go over there and join a terrorist group, you’re likely to end up instead in jail,” reported the Inquirer.
