Dian Yulia Novi and her husband Nur Solihin were among four suspected militants arrested Saturday after police detected their plot to bomb a guard-changing ceremony at the presidential palace.
A neighborhood on the outskirts of Jakarta was evacuated after a bomb was found.
Police suspect the four were part of a militant network responsible for a bomb-making lab in West Java province that was operating under the direction of Naim.
She said she was influenced by articles from an Islamic website on upholding monotheism and defending the caliphate and Aman Abdurrahman, a radical cleric serving a nine-year prison sentence in Indonesia.
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The active involvement of a woman in the plot is a new development for violent radicalism in socially conservative Indonesia, where women married to or associated with militants have typically stayed in the background.
The 3-kilogram bomb that Novi was to detonate would have exploded as crowds of people gathered to watch the presidential guard changing ceremony, a popular family attraction in Jakarta. In the interview, she revealed a chilling disregard for her fellow Indonesians.
Naim "himself has explained that there are spectators," she said. "I would mingle with them ... Then I would run toward the presidential guard and explode myself. That will be far from the spectators so they would not be hit directly."
Naim has been linked by police to several attacks in Indonesia this year including a January attack in Jakarta that killed eight people including the attackers.
Muslim-majority Indonesia has carried out a sustained crackdown on militants since the 2002 bombings on the tourist island of Bali by al-Qaida-affiliated radicals that killed 202 people.