Indonesia has arrested a fourth East Timor rebel believed linked to assassination attempts against the president and prime minister of the fledgling nation, national police chief General Sutanto said Thursday, reported the dpa.
General Sutanto, who like many Indonesians goes only by one name, said the four East Timorese nationals were arrested separately near the Indonesia-East Timor border.
"All four were Timor Leste military-men who had entered Indonesia without legal travel documents," the state-run Antara news agency quoted Sutanto as saying, adding that the four were suspected to have involved in the attacks of President Jose Ramos-Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao in February.
Earlier this week, Indonesian police said they had arrested three people, two in a border town in Indonesia's West Timor and another near Jakarta.
Sutanto said that all four were currently being held in Jakarta but gave no detail on the fourth person, adding that the arrests followed a request from the East Timor government.
Armed men, led by rebel leader Alfredo Reinado, attacked the residence of East Timor's president on February 11, which seriously injured Ramos-Horta.
Prime Minister Gusmao escaped unhurt from an attack on his motorcade a short time later.
Rebel leader Reinado and one of his men were killed in the attack, but a number of other militants remain at large.
Indonesia occupied East Timor for 24 years, and as many as 200,000 civilians died during that period. Jakarta denies committing any atrocities during the occupation and has claimed the violence in 1999 was not organized by its armed forces.
East Timor, a half-island territory that used to be a Portuguese colony, became an independent nation in 2002 after being administered by the UN for more than two years.