Villagers Bury Terror Suspect They Hardly Knew

Banda Aceh, TAG. Hundreds of local residents on Thursday visited the family home of a suspected terrorist slain in Aceh on Monday to express their condolences for a man police said was responsible for the 2005 beheadings of three Christian schoolgirls.



The body of Enal Tao, 38, who was shot dead in a police raid in Aceh Besar, was officially handed over by staff at Zainoel Abidin General Hospital in Banda Aceh on Thursday morning to his wife, Yuliana, 30, who was accompanied by her two young children and five other women. 



The body was taken to Yuliana’s grandmother’s house in Meunasah Balek village, Meureudu, Pidie Jaya district, about 130 kilometers east of the provincial capital, where prayers were held before it was carried to Yuliana’s family burial plot. 



Most of the villagers who attended the burial ceremony, however, said they did not know Enal because he seldom visited Meunasah Balek, and Yuliana rarely ventured outside, much less spoke to neighbors, when she visited her grandmother. 



“We don’t know much about Yuliana’s husband — he hardly comes back here. We do not even know when they got married,” said one local who asked not to be identified. 



Meanwhile, Yuliana, who has a 3-year-old son and a baby girl less than a year old, declined to speak to journalists, instead hiding from the assembled media at her grandmother’s house. 



Yuliana also refused to answer reporters’ questions when she picked up Enal’s body at the hospital in Banda Aceh. 



A source at the Aceh Police confirmed that Yuliana had been interrogated by police on Wednesday. The source said she had told investigators she did not know Enal had been involved in terrorist activities and that he had been on the run from police. 



Enal is believed to have provided shelter for Dulmatin, an international terrorist killed by police in March, and two other suspected terrorists, Ubaid and Abu Yusuf, when they arrived in the province earlier this year to conduct paramilitary training activities in Jalin Jantho in February. 

Police said they suspected Enal was also involved with the militant group. 



Both Ubaid and Abu Yusuf were arrested by police in Medan, North Sumatra, on Sunday. Aceh Police on Wednesday evening escorted the pair to the mountainous region of Lamkabeu in Aceh Besar, an area where police had exchanged gunfire with an armed group of militants last month, to uncover a stash of weapons they had hidden. 



Following an hour-long search, officers located four automatic rifles and 16 magazines of ammunition under the floorboards of an unused shack. 



Enal is also believed to have led a group of militants in the October 2005 beheadings of three teenage girls during communal clashes in Poso, Central Sulawesi, and of having shot dead three civilians and a police officer during the same conflict.[]