Surabaya bombings: Middle-class family slipped under the radar

Behind their normal, middle-class facade, the Surabaya bombing family was turned into the perfect killing machine.

Firefighters outside the Surabaya Centre Pentecostal Church after one of the attacks. Picture: via AFP

The young Indonesian family that launched a series of deadly suicide bomb attacks on Christian churches on Sunday was a well-educated, middle-class clan whose business selling fragrant oils afforded them a comfortable life in the country’s second-largest city, Surabaya.

The family of six, including two boys aged 17 and 15 and two young girls aged just nine and 12, had raised no suspicions among neighbours in Surabaya’s well-to-do neighbourhood of Wonorejo Rungkut ahead of Sunday’s horrific attacks on three separate churches in the city.

But behind their normal, middle-class facade, the family was turned into the perfect killing machine — able to plan their attacks under the radar of Indonesian intelligence agencies who closely monitor social media platforms and militant chatrooms.

The family police say were involved in the Surabaya church bombings.

So far 14 people have died from the blasts, including all four children whose parents strapped suicide belts to the youngest girls and sent their boys off on a separate suicide mission.

Also among the dead were two young brothers, Vincencius, 11, and Nathaniel, 8, who died of injuries from the first blast outside the Santa Maria Catholic Church at 7.10am Sunday.

Another three people — the bomb maker, his wife and eldest son — died from a separate, premature blast last night in a low-cost apartment on the outskirts of Surabaya on Sunday night.

Church bomber Dita Upriarto was a businessman who sold black cumin oil, sesame oil, and hazelnut oil online. His wife Puji Kuswati was a qualified nurse who, according to her long inactive Facebook page, graduated from Surabaya’s Nursing Academy RSI.

But police now believe he was also connected to Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD), an umbrella organisation of Indonesian ISIS-affiliated militant groups proscribed by the US State Department.

Indonesian police chief Tito Karnavian said Dita had taken his family to northern Syria to join the ISIS caliphate.

Some time later they crossed back into Turkey where they “were arrested by Turkish authorities and deported. The father eventually became the head of the JAD Surabaya cell,” he said.

“Internationally ISIS is cornered and they instructed members of its network to launch an attack all over the world, including in London where an attack also occurred,” General Tito said last night.

“There are also 500 Indonesians still in Syria, 103 dead in Syria and 500 deported. These deportees still have the same mindset and it is a challenge for us. Locally, ISIS is also cornered because their leaders have largely been arrested.

“That’s why ISIS supporters are instructed to retaliate, including the prison riot at Brimob detention facility,” he added, referring to Wednesday’s 36-hour stand-off by terrorist prisoners at a high security facility outside Jakarta in which five police from a crack counter-terrorism unit and one inmate were killed.

General Tito said he believed the event at Brimob had “inspired other cells to launch their own attacks”.