Timika, Papua – Fourteen people have been arrested over a series of deadly ambushes near a Freeport gold and copper mine in Indonesia's Papua province, police said yesterday.
Six were being investigated over ambushes at the weekend in which an Australian mine technician, Drew Grant, 29, and two Indonesians died, said the provincial police chief, Bagus Ekodanto. "We are investigating them on their involvement in any of the shootings."
Eight other detainees included the man who allegedly fired on a security convoy on July 12, killing a Freeport security guard, Mr Ekodanto said earlier. "We arrested eight people, one carried out the shooting and another carried ammunition. We are still investigating the other six."
Police have also retrieved hundreds of bullets for rifles and revolvers. Mr Ekodanto refused to name the suspects or say whether they belonged to the separatist Free Papua Movement.
The attack was one of several military-style ambushes on Freeport and police vehicles on the road between Timika town and the Grasberg mine.
A day earlier gunmen had ambushed a Freeport vehicle on the same road, killing Mr Grant, an Australian project manager at Grasberg, which is owned by the local subsidiary of the US company Freeport McMoRan.
Mr Ekodanto said police were not yet linking the two attacks on July 11 and 12, although they took place within a short distance of each other on the same road.
The military chief General Djoko Santoso has blamed separatist rebels for all the attacks, but police have said there is no indication that is the case.
Senior officials have said former soldiers or police could have been involved as part of a dispute over control of access to lucrative illegal mining operations using tailings from Grasberg.
The Defence Minister, Juwono Sudarsono, has even suggested the involvement of foreign countries that have an "interest in destabilising Freeport".
The Grasberg mine sits on the world's largest gold and copper reserves and is a lightning rod for discontent over rule from Jakarta, which took control of the eastern Papua region in 1969 in a vote backed by the United Nations and widely seen as rigged.