Homeland Security News

Indonesian police say they have arrested the leader of Al Qaeda-linked extremist network Jemaah Islamiah (JI), which carried out the 2002 Bali bombings that killed more than 200 people.

Para Wijayanto was detained by counterterrorism police with his wife on Saturday at a hotel in Bekasi, a city on the outskirts of the capital Jakarta, the national police spokesman Dedi Prasetyo said.

Prasetyo said Wijayanto is suspected of being involved in the making of bombs used in a series of attacks, including the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people and a 2004 attack on the Australian embassy in Jakarta, that killed nine.

Read more: The Guardian (UK)

Philippine authorities have identified as a Filipino militant one of two suicide attackers who set off bombs last week that killed five people and the bombers in a southern army camp, a Filipino general said Tuesday.

Maj. Gen. Cirilito Sobejana told The Associated Press that the family of the 23-year-old militant, Norman Lasuca, has identified him as one of the bombers who detonated a bomb on Friday at the gate of an army encampment in Sulu province's Indanan town. The other suicide attacker remains unidentified.

Lasuca is the first known Filipino militant to have agreed to carry out a suicide bombing, a development that has concerned Philippine security officials. Two suicide bombings in the country's south in recent months, also blamed on Sawadjaan, have been blamed on foreign militants by Philippine authorities.

Read more: Minneapolis Star Tribune

"The way we used to protect planes," Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Cyber Week conference in Tel Aviv last week—a slide depicting photographs of several hijacked planes on the screen behind him, "was armed guards and security forces ready to burst in... and locked doors to keep pilots and passengers apart."

The image on the screen changed to show an Etihad Airlines A380 set against Sydney's skyline. "That plane," Netanyahu said, "was not going to be hijacked. That plane from Sydney to Abu Dhabi was going to be exploded in midair. We found out through our cyber activities that ISIS was going to do this and we alerted the Australian police and they stopped it before it could happen."

Last year, Israel's military confirmed that "soldiers of Unit 8200, along with the country’s intelligence community," had provided the Australian authorities with information on a major ISIS plot in 2017 "to down a civilian plane heading from Australia to Abu Dhabi," with "security forces able to arrest the terrorists, who were in the final stages of executing the attack."

Read more: Forbes

Egyptian officials say militants have stormed a post office in the northern Sinai Peninsula and seized around $6,000 in local currency.

The officials say the attack took place Monday in al-Rouda village, where a 2017 militant assault on a mosque killed more than 300 people.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters.

Read more: ABC News

A machine at a Facebook mailing facility in Menlo Park, California, alerted employees Monday that a package might contain sarin, according to fire officials.

No employees have been exposed to the substance, the Menlo Park Fire District said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines sarin as a “human-made chemical warfare agent classified as a nerve agent.”

Read more: CNBC