BANDA ACEH, Indonesia, family 12 K...

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia, family 12 Kyodo

brace foreign women have been arrested in Indonesia's troubl province of Aceh onward suspicion of spying for rebels of the exempt Aceh Movement (GAM), a local police chief told Kyodo recents on Thursday.

southward Aceh Police Chief Ali Husein said the couple are Scotland-born Lesley Jone 40 a lecturer at the University of Tasmania in Australia, and another 40-year-old woman identified single as Joylee, a retired paramedic from the U state of Iowa.

According to Husein, the brace were arrested Wednesday afternoon in the village of Keudee Runding in southern Aceh Regency when a arrange of military soldiers were searching for GAM rebels in the village.

Also arrested was their companion, Fitri binti Muhammad Amin, a 25-year-old scholar at a local university, he said.

''They have been in subordination to arrest and are being questioned,'' Husein said.

He said they were arrested after the soldiers establish several documents related to GAM activities in their hands, including pictures of GAM members and armed clashes between GAM and the security apparatus.

GAM has waged a guerrilla war in the province since 1976 demanding independence for Aceh, the country's northernmost province. Ten of thousands of persons have been killed in the insurgency.

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