Policeman killed in Indonesia suicide bombing attack

A suicide bomber attacked a police station in Indonesia's island of Java on Wednesday, killing one police officer and wounding at least 10 others.

The perpetrator is believed to have been an Islamist militant. Indonesian police told media a note which read "criminal code is the law of infidels, let's fight the satanic law Enforcers" was recovered from the scene of the blast in Bandung, Indonesia.

Indonesia ratified on Tuesday a new criminal code which punishes sex and co-habitation outside marriage with jail terms, and also outlaws "defamation" of the president and state institutions and expands the definition of blasphemy.

Though the new code, which still await the president's ratification, includes many rules from the Islamic sharia-law, its 624 articles also contain tougher measures against extremism, and the document reflects Indonesia's official status as a multi-faith country with six officially recognized religions.

Who is the perpetrator?

The attacker was identified as Agus Sujatno or Abu Muslim. He was only released from prison last year after serving a 4-year sentence for being convicted of funding terrorism and making explosives used in a 2017 terrorist attack.

He is believed to be a member of the militant organization Jemaah Anshorut Daulah, or JAD. The group has claimed several deadly suicide bombings in the country and has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State militant group.

After his release from prison, Sujatno reportedly rejected the government's deradicalization program, which landed him on the police's "red" list of militant convicts.

Why was he against the new criminal code?

Indonesian police chief Listyo Sigit Prabowo told a news conference that investigators had found "dozens of papers protesting the newly ratified criminal code" at the crime scene.

Todd Elliot, a senior security analyst at Concord Consulting in Jakarta, told the Reuters news agency that the new code doesn't only contain sharia-based provisions, but also other articles that hardliners would not support.

This includes "outlawing any ideology that goes against the state ideology, Pancasila, and that would also include extremist ideology."

First articulated in 1945, Indonesia's Pancasila ideology is based on five principles: Indonesian nationalism, internationalism (or humanism), consent (or democracy), social prosperity and belief in one God.

Some hardline Islamist extremists argue that the some of the above principles contradict sharia-law.

Indoensia's worst militant attack was the 2002's bar and nightclub bombing in the resort island of Bali, which killed over 200 people. More recently, however, Islamist extremists have shifted to smaller scale but more frequent attacks, mostly targeting churches and police headquarters.

rmt/msh (AFP, AP, Reuters)