17 suspects, 298 rounds: police say a weapons-supply network for armed groups ran through Jayapura

On that afternoon in Argapura, a 33-year-old man was taken into custody as he passed through. The time was recorded: Tuesday, 29 September 2026, shortly after 3.15pm eastern Indonesian time. He was not a new name to investigators at the Papua regional police criminal investigation directorate. His name had been on a wanted list since 15 April 2026 in a case involving a weapons and ammunition network in the Jayapura area.

The head of public relations for Operation Damai Cartenz 2026, Senior Commissioner Yusuf Sutejo, identified the man by the initials YYS, also known as OS and K. He said YYS was a repeat narcotics offender who served seven years and finished his sentence early in 2026. "YYS is suspected of acting as an intermediary in the buying and selling of weapons and ammunition," Yusuf told Tribun Papua Tengah.

The arrest was not an isolated event, and that is the point. It was the latest link pulled from a chain investigators had been unravelling since March: people who paid, people who ordered the weapons, people who connected buyers to sellers, and people who supplied the ammunition.

It began with one transaction in Sentani

This case has a precise starting date. On 12 March 2026, officers moved across Jayapura city and regency and detained eight people. The incident that became the basis of the police report took place at the traffic junction near the old market in Sentani, Jayapura regency. A day later, on 13 March 2026, investigators held a case review and named five people as suspects; three others were treated as witnesses. The police report is numbered LP/A/1/III/2026/SPKT.DITKRIMUM/POLDA PAPUA and dated that day.

The first five names in the police release show the shape of the network. SP (38) is recorded as the buyer, or the person seeking firearms and ammunition. OB, also known as Bakuru (22), is recorded as a donor of funds and a buyer. YP (35) is recorded as a donor of funds. MKM (39) and DK (35) are recorded as intermediaries.

Fourteen days later, the same network produced four more names in Jayapura: KO (45), SMM (40), HM (53) and AKW (51). HM appears with a different role; he is described as a seller of ammunition and magazines. AKW is described as supplying ammunition. KO, SMM and AKW are recorded as intermediaries or facilitators.

The money that could finally be examined

This is the part that makes the Jayapura case different from much of the reporting on conflict in Papua. The question of who funds armed groups usually stops at an allegation. In this file, investigators wrote down numbers.

OB, also known as Bakuru (22), is recorded as contributing about 122 million rupiah towards the purchase of a homemade firearm and ammunition. YP (35) is recorded as contributing about 13 million rupiah for ammunition. When officers held the case review in mid-March, items seized included five weapon magazines, identity documents, mobile phones and hundreds of millions of rupiah in cash.

Another detail emerged from the early transactions. On 4 March 2026, according to police accounts, a single long-barrelled homemade firearm changed hands for about 80 million rupiah. Investigators suspect the weapon came from a foreign national. The transaction involved AG, SP and SM meeting DK.

These figures matter for one reason: money of that size does not stop at an intermediary's table. It turns into ammunition, and that ammunition gets used. How much was used before investigators counted the 298 rounds still in stock, no one can say with certainty.

A donor who came from the ranks

On 28 March 2026, two people were arrested in Sentani, Jayapura regency. The first, identified as NH, has a role unlike the other suspects: he is described as a provider of funds. According to police, NH is a member of the Yamue battalion of an armed group in Yahukimo. The second, HLT (38), is described as supplying ammunition. The arrest yielded 132 rounds of 7.62 millimetre ammunition.

This is a pattern often missed in reporting. Weapons do not always come from abroad or from an international black market. In this file, the route runs through district towns in Papua: from someone collecting money, to an intermediary, to a magazine dealer in town, and on to an armed group in the highlands.

Seven months, five towns

The arrests in this case are spread across five locations, and the sequence shows the network moving almost as fast as investigators. On 12 March, eight people were detained in Jayapura city and regency. On 25-26 March, four more were detained in Jayapura. On 28 March, NH and HLT were arrested in Sentani. On 15 April, investigators issued wanted-list notices, including for YYS and IHB.

On 6 June 2026, YK (52) was arrested near the central market in Sarmi regency. According to police, YK received a weapon and ammunition from a man identified only as B in Argapura in early March, and then passed them on in a transaction with an armed group. Sarmi is roughly seven hours by road from Jayapura, and the arrest shows the network did not stop at the city limits.

On 7 July 2026, AG was arrested without resistance outside the naval hospital in Jayapura. He had been on the wanted list since 15 April. Four others were detained with him: FCRG, JT, IK and MK. AG's role in the file is as the link between SP, the buyer, and DK, an intermediary.

The final two arrests came close together. YYS was detained in Argapura on 29 September 2026, and IHB, also known as H (23), was detained in Padang Bulan, Heram district, Jayapura, on 6 October 2026. According to police, both acted as links: IHB is said to have connected the buyer SP with the seller YK.

On 7 October 2026, police announced the total: 17 suspects. Thirteen are at the second stage of the case, two identified as LNR and BEI are at the first stage as intermediaries, and the two most recent detainees, YYS and IHB, are still under investigation. The file is not closed, and further names remain possible.

The most recent development came from the sea. On 5 October 2026, customs officers intercepted 200 rounds of 5.56 millimetre ammunition being smuggled in the waters off Muara Tami, Jayapura, and handed the evidence to the Papua regional police criminal investigation directorate. The arrest in Argapura and the interception at Muara Tami happened six days apart, at two different entry points.

What was seized, and why the rusted barrels matter

The charge, and why funders are treated as perpetrators

The charge against YYS and the wider case rests on Article 306 of Indonesia's new criminal code. Its wording covers nearly every act that appears in the file: bringing into the country, making, receiving, attempting to obtain, handing over, possessing, carrying, storing, transporting, concealing, using or removing firearms, ammunition and explosives without a licence. The maximum penalty is 15 years in prison.

What makes the article relevant to the funders is not the sentence but the second article attached to it: Article 20. It defines who counts as a perpetrator, including those who take part in the act and those who move others to commit it by giving or promising something, or by providing an opportunity, means or information. The phrase "Article 306 in conjunction with Article 20" therefore treats the buyer, the intermediaries and the funders as perpetrators rather than accessories.

The article also marks a shift worth noting. Indonesia's new criminal code took effect on 2 January 2026. It repealed Articles 1 and 2 of Emergency Law No. 12 of 1951 and redirected references to Articles 306 and 307. The old provision carried the death penalty, life imprisonment or up to 20 years. Weapons cases that arise after 2026 therefore fall under a lighter sentencing regime than older cases, where defendants could still receive life.

How the courts have ruled so far

The record is instructive. On 4 February 2020, the Timika district court sentenced Jefri Albinus Bees, who bought more than 600 rounds, to six years, and two other defendants to five years each. On 11 February 2020, the Jayapura military court III-19 handed a life sentence in a case involving 13,431 rounds, with two co-defendants receiving 15 years and two and a half years. A month later the same court sentenced First Private Demisia Arista Tefbana, who sold weapons and 1,300 rounds, to life.

The most relevant ruling for the Jayapura case comes from outside Papua. On 6 November 2025, the Bojonegoro district court in East Java ruled on a case involving a workshop that made firearms and sold them into Papua. The defendant who organised and financed the operation received 15 years. The two men who assembled the weapons received four years each, and the courier one and a half. The heaviest sentence went not to the person holding a weapon but to the person who provided the money and the organisation.

One thing has not happened, and it should be stated plainly. Since armed groups were categorised as terrorist organisations on 29 April 2021, not a single ruling in Papua has used a terrorism-financing provision. The official police wanted list published in 2023 contains no Papua entries at all. In August 2026 the head of the national counter-terrorism agency stated that armed-group violence in Papua does not fall under the terrorism law and continues to be handled under ordinary criminal law. The consequence is clear: in court, funders are tried as firearms offenders, not as terrorism financiers.

The list of evidence in this case explains a great deal. Across the operation, officers recorded 298 rounds of ammunition, four long SS1 magazines, one short SS1 magazine, one homemade firearm, and six World War II-era weapons barrels found rusted. From the arrest of HLT in Sentani, officers seized 132 rounds of 7.62 millimetre ammunition.

Those six rusted barrels are not a trivial detail. Weapons from the 1940s can still fire, and barrels sold separately show the buyer wanted working parts, not scrap metal. SS1 magazines are not an everyday purchase either; one magazine means one weapon ready to be fired repeatedly.

The most decisive item on the list, however, is the ammunition. In an armed group's supply chain, a weapon can last for years. Ammunition cannot. Rounds are fired, lost in firefights, or ruined in the jungle. That is why 298 rounds and 132 rounds are more dangerous figures than the number of weapons: this is the part of the chain that must keep being refilled, and for that same reason it leaves investigators the clearest trail.

Not the first network

Market prices explain why the chain never runs empty. A 2020 ruling priced a single round at 100,000 rupiah. In 2022 reported prices ranged from 150,000 to 500,000 rupiah a round, and in 2026 a suspect in Nabire sold about 100 rounds at 250,000 rupiah each. For weapons, an M4 or M16 bought in Jakarta for 100 to 150 million rupiah could be resold in Papua for 300 to 350 million. That gap is what pays the intermediaries.

A statement from the other side closes the last gap in the chain. Sebby Sambom, a spokesperson for TPNPB-OPM, has acknowledged that the weapons his group uses belong to the organisation, and said in his own words that they bought them from Indonesian soldiers and police officers who needed money. He also said funding came from individual regional commands, from gold sales, and from private donors. That admission matches what investigators found: the buyers, intermediaries and funders work in town, far from where the rounds are used.

The Jayapura case fits into a long record already visible in court rulings. Across cases decided between 2011 and 2021, 51 people were convicted, 52 weapons and 9,605 rounds of ammunition were recorded in cases involving the supply of weapons to armed groups in Papua.

Those involved were not always outsiders. There was First Private Demisia Arista Tefbana, a soldier at the Mimika district military command, who sold weapons to an armed group. There was Jefri Albinus Bees, who bought more than 600 rounds and involved four serving military personnel. There was Aske Mabel, who took four weapons and 71 rounds from the Yalimo police armoury. There was Police Brigadier Muhammad Jabir Hayan, who carried weapons from Jakarta to Nabire.

The sources of money have also been documented as coming from public coffers. In several cases, weapons and ammunition purchases were financed with village funds and regional budgets, recorded under headings that had nothing to do with firearms.

If that pattern has been known for more than a decade, the reasonable question is no longer how weapons get in. The question is why the same route still worked in 2026, and who bought from these intermediaries without ever appearing in the file.

Where the rounds end up

The effects reach as far as air travel. In February 2026, eleven pioneer airports in Papua were closed because of security disruptions, and Tanah Merah airport in Boven Digoel was briefly blockaded in a land dispute. The number of internally displaced people in Papua, according to monitoring groups, rose from about 107,000 in April 2026 to nearly 123,000 in June 2026.

Weapons and ammunition do not stop with the buyer. Through 2026, armed violence around Jayapura has risen, and casualties have fallen in several regencies. The National Commission on Human Rights recorded 42 violent incidents across Papua in the first half of 2026, with 59 people killed: 43 civilians, eight soldiers and police officers, and eight members of armed groups. Fifty people were wounded.

In Boven Digoel, on 11 February 2026, a Smart Air aircraft was shot at Korowai Batu airstrip. Pilot Egon Erawan and co-pilot Baskoro Adi Anggoro were killed; 13 passengers survived. On 18-20 May 2026, gold panners in Kawe village, Awimbon district, Pegunungan Bintang, were attacked; between eight and eleven people were killed depending on the source, and dozens of other panners were evacuated.

On 4 June 2026, houses, a school and health facilities in Manggelum district, Boven Digoel, were burned in an attack claimed by TPNPB Kodap XVI Yahukimo. Around 235 residents fled to Tanah Merah. In late July 2026, three civilians were killed in Korowai and hundreds more went into the forest.

No list can tie one round seized in Sentani to one specific shot in Boven Digoel. What can be recorded is the direction: as long as rounds can still be bought through intermediaries in district towns, the violence in the villages will never fully stop.

What remains unclear in the file

Several things should be stated honestly. First, one initial keeps appearing in police releases across a dozen outlets without ever being explained: HLT is described as "supplying ammunition to EKW", but no official source says who EKW is. The simplest possibility is a typo for AKW, another suspect also recorded as an ammunition supplier. The other possibility is that one name has not been disclosed.

Second, early summaries that circulated merged two people into one. The phrase "YP as the funder of MKM" implied an organisation or programme called MKM. From the first release in March, MKM turns out to be no acronym at all; it is the initial of a 39-year-old suspect who ferried and introduced buyers to sellers of homemade weapons. The official list separates YP and MKM as two people with different roles.

Third, the full names of the suspects have not been published, and there is no official detail so far on where they come from, their occupations, or their economic backgrounds. Without that, the most important question — whether the money they raised came from their own pockets, from other activities, or from a more organised source — cannot be answered from public documents.

Fourth, the charge against YYS is Article 306 in conjunction with Article 20 of Law No. 1 of 2023, the criminal code, covering the unlawful possession of firearms, ammunition or explosives. The case is still at the investigation stage and no court has ruled in this series. Everyone named as a suspect in this article is presumed innocent until proven in court and has the right to contest the allegations.

Five things worth remembering

First, the case has a clear and checkable origin: a single transaction at the junction near Sentani's old market on 12 March 2026, which grew into 17 suspects over seven months.

Second, the file includes people whose role was neither to sell nor to carry weapons, but to put up money: about 122 million rupiah and about 13 million rupiah for a homemade firearm and ammunition.

Third, one of the funders is described by police as a member of the armed group's Yamue battalion in Yahukimo. That arrest in Sentani also yielded 132 rounds of 7.62 millimetre ammunition.

Fourth, this is not a new pattern. Rulings between 2011 and 2021 record 51 convictions, 52 weapons and 9,605 rounds, with perpetrators including serving officers and financing drawn from public funds.

Fifth, the violence that uses those rounds is not abstract. In the first half of 2026 alone, the national human rights commission recorded 59 deaths in Papua: 43 of them civilians. As long as the supply chain stays alive in district towns, that number will keep rising, and the cost will not fall on those selling magazines.