Fortunately Hambali, considered one of the world’s most dangerous terrorists and the mastermind behind last year’s Bali bombings, had inadvertently left a trail his pursuers couldn’t miss. Everywhere he went, he reached out to allies and friends: officials in Bangkok claim he was trying to put together a suicide squad for an attack during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in October, when U.S. President George W. Bush and other world leaders would be visiting the Thai capital. Police and CIA operatives monitored Hambali’s contacts for a couple of weeks. Then on Aug. 11, in the ancient Thai city of Ayutthaya, about 40 miles north of Bangkok, they closed the net. “Hambali was one of the world’s most lethal terrorists,” Bush told U.S. troops in San Diego after the capture. “He is no longer a problem.”
U.S. intelligence sources say it is hard to overstate the importance of Hambali’s capture. He was not only the “operational mastermind” of Al Qaeda’s Southeast Asian associate, Jemaah Islamiah, but Osama bin Laden’s senior representative in the region. The 39-year-old West Java native has been implicated in planning for the 9/11 attacks, the nightclub bombings that killed 202 people on the island of Bali in October 2002 and numerous other deadly terrorist incidents, including the bombing of the Marriott hotel that killed 12 people in Jakarta on Aug. 5.
His arrest could lead to answers to many of the lingering questions about these attacks and could help unravel other plots still in the works. NEWSWEEK has learned that at least one major Qaeda detainee in U.S. custody has alleged that Hambali was assigned to recruit additional teams of hijackers to launch follow-up attacks on U.S. targets after 9/11. A U.S. official says those allegations have been corroborated by other intelligence sources and are regarded as credible by senior officials. “It is likely that he has extensive knowledge of former and current Jemaah Islamiah operations in the United States and elsewhere,” adds a U.S. official. “He is a ruthless terrorist intent on killing as many Americans as possible. And in terms of Southeast Asia, he was the [Qaeda] chieftain.”
Hambali’s exploits have been all the more impressive to officials and terrorism experts given that he’s been on the run since at least December 2001. Authorities are now trying to retrace his steps; he’s believed to have traveled with a small entourage across much of Southeast Asia in recent months, staying at various times in Malaysia, Cambodia, Burma and Thailand.
It was in Thailand that Hambali finally slipped up. Thai officials–with the help of the CIA–determined his whereabouts after tracing a telephone call he made to a suspected Indonesian terrorist who was already under surveillance. A Thai military-intelligence source claims that CIA agents and a Thai antiterrorism task force kept Hambali under surveillance for two weeks before they finally made the bust–in an attempt to learn as much as possible about his circle of supporters and planned attacks before his arrest. When Thai police burst in on Hambali’s studio in Ayutthaya’s Boonyarak apartment complex, they found the terrorist, his Malaysian wife, Noralwizah Lee, and a large amount of money, reportedly supplied by Qaeda agents.
What that money was for is one of many pressing questions American interrogators –have for Hambali. (The suspect was quickly whisked out of Thailand by the CIA and taken to an undisclosed location.) Other arrests are likely to follow. “We have a list of many of his contacts, but we’re waiting for the CIA to confirm if they match [lists of JI operatives] or not,” says a senior member of the Bangkok crime suppression unit. “If they do match, we’ll work on it from this end.” Indonesian officials have expressed interest in putting Hambali on trial. And Malaysian police are anxious to get access to his wife, Lee, as they’d like to quiz her on the terror outfit’s activities there. Hambali is also believed to have a second wife, a Cambodian woman whom he married some time between September and March.
Southeast Asia’s most-wanted man was born Encep Nurjaman, one of 12 children of a schoolteacher in the village of Sukamanah, some 50 miles southeast of Jakarta. (He’s often identified in press accounts by another alias, Riduan Isamuddin.) He is recalled by neighbors as a “taciturn, obedient boy,” who attended a local pesantren, or Islamic boarding school, according to Tempo magazine. He was about 20 when he migrated to Malaysia in search of work. Once there, he met and became a disciple of the radical Islamic cleric Abdullah Sungkar, who, along with cleric Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, had fled to the neighboring Muslim country to escape the repressive Suharto regime.
His promotion to the top ranks of terrorists was secured by time spent in Afghanistan in the late 1980s. He spent several years training as a jihadi fighter, picking up deadly expertise and cultivating connections. That’s when he evidently met bin Laden and other senior members of the group that would become Al Qaeda. One of his closest associates was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, then a roving operative and later one of bin Laden’s top strategic planners. After the war, Hambali returned to Malaysia and began calling for a holy war against the United States.
Hambali was a doer, not just a talker. Intelligence specialists believe he was in charge of logistics and accommodations for the now notorious January 2000 terror-planning session in Kuala Lumpur. After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, Hambali became a key point man for Al Qaeda’s planned counterattack. The Indonesian was tasked–again by Mohammed–to organize another “major attack” against U.S. interests to “take some of the heat off” Qaeda fighters, according to Zachary Abuza, a Simmons College professor and expert on Jemaah Islamiah. That assignment led to the Hambali-organized plot to blow up the American, British, Israeli and Australian embassies in Singapore. Cell members had already completed a detailed reconnaissance of the embassies and acquired four tons of ammonium nitrate when the operation was foiled in December 2001. Officials were not as fortunate in the case of Bali, almost a year later. “Hambali is a key operational commander who has been involved in every major terrorist plot in the region,” says Andrew Tan, a security analyst for the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore. Adds Abuza, “He was a charismatic figure who was able to convince Southeast Asians to be involved in suicide bombings, and that’s no small thing.”
Some analysts are hopeful that Hambali may be difficult to replace. “On the one hand, there are people who already have [replaced Hambali] in terms of strategizing and planning,” says Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group. “But the question is whether there is someone who can play the role he did as a conduit for funding from the outside.” Still, authorities can’t afford to pat themselves on the back for long. “He’s been working for quite some time,” says the Thai police source. “We don’t know if he’s got things set up [for an attack] or not.” And the terrorist cells that he set up remain active. “It is a mistake to think that Hambali’s arrest will reduce the threat of terror in Southeast Asia,” says Tan. “Although 200 JI operatives have been arrested, 500 to 1,000 members have gone through terrorist training. Others will step up to take the place of those arrested.” Which means Hambali may not have played his last hand.
