poison plot indonesia
Police are often the targets of militant attacks in Indonesia. Here, anti-terror policemen hold a man suspected of having links with a suicide bomber who blew himself up, outside a police office in Cirebon May 19, 2011. Reuters

It's a plot straight out of feudal Europe, when kings' used food-testers to make sure they weren't being poisoned by jealous rivals.

In Indonesia, 16 people were arrested for the attempted assassinations of police officers by putting cyanide poison into the officers' food. Police apprehended the suspects after confessions led to the locations of the would-be killers in and around the capital city of Jakarta.

We rounded them up in a four-day operation last week, police spokesman Boy Rafli Amar told reporters.

Besides poisoning food at police station canteens, they also planned to inject the poison into mineral water bottles, he said, adding that the suspects revealed the plot during police interrogation.

This is a new model of terror attack.

Along with the poison, police also found pen guns during the raid.

The suspected terrorists are thought to be members of a new and very active militant cell. The group has been linked to book bombs sent to Muslim moderates and counter-terrorism officials, as well as an April suicide bomb at a police station in West Java, according to the AFP.

Police are increasingly being targeted by extremists in Indonesia. In September, 2010, a man tried to blow up a police post using a bomb attached to his bicycle.

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