Hambali - J.I. No 2 - captured by CIA & Foreign Government

Atobe SG

It was announced that the much wanted man - Hambali, the No 2 man in the Jemaah Islamiyah organisation - was captured in Thailand by the C.I.A and a Foreign Government, and currently held in an overseas location.

This report from the Associated Press differ from the reports on the CNN and Straits Times websites, with both reporting that FBI and Thai authorities had arrested Hambali.

It will not be surprising if the unreported Foreign Government may turn out to be Singapore, and that Hambali is now being interrogated at the HQ of Singapore I.S.D.

With Singapore's close ties to Thailand - politically, militarily and security - and Singapore's regional superiority in SigInt, it is quite possible that this hunt for J.I. No 2 had Singapore's involvement.

High al-Qaida leader seized

By JOHN J. LUMPKIN and SLOBODAN LEKIC
Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- He reportedly set up a meeting between al-Qaida and two of the Sept. 11 hijackers. Intelligence reports say he planned a second wave of attacks foiled at the last minute. The White House says he tried to recruit new pilots to carry out additional Sept. 11-like suicide missions in the United States. The Bali bombings that killed 202 people purportedly were carried out under his watch.

He is Riduan Isamuddin, a 39-year-old Indonesian cleric better known as Hambali -- once one of the world's most-wanted terrorists. He created the Southeast Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah in al-Qaida's image, recruited eager young Muslims and sent them to al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan.

On Thursday, the United States announced he was captured at last.

Hambali, whose whereabouts had been unknown since he disappeared after Sept. 11, 2001, seems to be linked to nearly every major al-Qaida and Jemaah Islamiyah plot since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon -- and several before that.

Hambali was detained this week during a joint operation run by the CIA and a foreign government in Southeast Asia. American officials declined to identify that government, although foreign newspapers reported Hambali was taken in Thailand. He has been taken to an undisclosed location overseas for interrogation by American officials.

An al-Qaida detainee first told of Hambali's assignment to find more suicide hijackers not long after the attacks of Sept. 11, a senior Bush administration official said. Other sources confirmed his efforts. Hambali also received money earlier this year from an al-Qaida operative in Pakistan, the official said.

'No longer a problem'

A U.S. counterterrorism official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said it is unclear how successful his recruiting drive was, but that he will be interrogated on the matter.

President Bush described Hambali as a notorious figure and a killer.

"He is no longer a problem to those of us who love freedom," Bush said during a speech Thursday to troops at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, Calif. "And neither are nearly two-thirds of known senior al-Qaida leaders, operational managers and key facilitators who have been captured or have been killed."

Hambali is suspected of ties to several recent attacks, including the Aug. 5 bombing of the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia, that killed 12 people and injured 150.

He is suspected of playing an organizing role in the Oct. 12, 2002, bombing of a nightclub in Bali that killed about 200 people, many of them Australians.

Jemaah Islamiyah also is believed to be behind a foiled plot to bomb Western targets in Singapore in late 2001, and a series of church bombings in Indonesia and the Philippines in December 2000. Authorities also say Hambali is connected to the Sept. 11 plot, although whether he played a direct role is unclear.

In January 2000, Hambali had one of his deputies host meetings between two eventual Sept. 11 hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, and a high-ranking al-Qaida figure who organized the bombing of the USS Cole, at his apartment in Malaysia in January 2000.

He was one of two key leaders the CIA had identified as leaders of Jemaah Islamiyah. The other, the Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, founded the group in 1989 and served as its spiritual leader, U.S. officials said. Bashir lived openly and was detained in October 2002. He denies any links to Jemaah Islamiyah.

Outside of Indonesia, the group operates in Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Myanmar and Thailand.

Group will persist

Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief, cautioned that the capture of the group's leaders does not render it ineffective.

"Hambali is the key guy, but it's not going to stop [Jemaah Islamiyah] from carrying out more attacks," he said.

Bush said Hambali was close to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. Counterterrorism officials said Hambali is the highest-ranking operative from al-Qaida captured since Mohammed was taken in Pakistan on March 1.

Hambali's capture comes after an increase in violence connected to Islamic militants across Asia.

-- Associated Press writer Curt Anderson contributed to this article

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0803/15captured.html

Atobe SG

The following news report from Reuters had an unidentified Thai official stating that Hambali was flown out of Thailand, and being interrogated in Indonesia.

Hambali was able to evade capture for so long as he had plastic surgery done, removing the beard that file picture showed; and moved around carrying a Spanish passport.

Hambali Handed Over to U.S. After Thai Arrest
Fri August 15, 2003 12:52 AM ET
By Nopporn Wong-Anan

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Hambali, al Qaeda's top man in Asia and suspected mastermind behind numerous deadly bombings in the region, has been captured in Thailand, handed over to the Americans and flown to Indonesia, officials said on Friday.

Asia's most wanted man, now clean-shaven and his face altered by plastic surgery, was arrested together with a woman by Thai and U.S. officials in Ayutthaya, the ancient Thai capital 50 miles north of Bangkok, a senior Thai general said.

"A special flight from the United States picked him up at Bangkok airport on Wednesday morning," said the general, who declined to be identified.

Hambali, born Riduan Isamuddin, and his wife were flown to Indonesia, said a Thai government minister who asked not to be identified. No immediate confirmation was available from Jakarta or Washington.

He is wanted in Indonesia as the suspected operational brains behind last October's Bali bombings that killed 202 people and in connection with many other attacks across the archipelago.

U.S. officials have said Hambali, thought to be operations chief of Southeast Asia's militant Jemaah Islamiah (JI) network and the only non-Arab to sit on al Qaeda's military committee, was being interrogated. They would not say where.

President Bush was told of the capture on Wednesday while on vacation at his Texas ranch.

"He's a known killer. Hambali was one of the world's most lethal terrorists. He is no longer a problem," he told U.S. troops in San Diego on Thursday.

Governments across Asia and in Australia let out sighs of relief at the capture of a man tagged one of the world's most dangerous. He had been on the run since at least 2000.

Apart from the Bali attacks, he was wanted in connection with numerous bombings in Indonesia and was believed to have been present at planning meetings for the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

However, officials voiced fears that JI might strike again -- little more than a week after a suicide car bomber killed 12 people at a luxury Jakarta hotel -- in revenge for the capture of the man believed to have planned their operations.

"We should not let our guard down," Philippine National Security Adviser Roilo Golez told Reuters. "We have to raise the alert level against repercussions or retaliatory attacks."

SPANISH PASSPORT

Australia said the arrest of Hambali, who is about 40, was a major breakthrough in the U.S.-led war on terror. Indonesia called it "an important mark in the global fight against terror."

Hambali, the son of peasant farmers on the main Indonesian island of Java, crossed into Thailand last week from Laos using a fake Spanish passport, a police general said.

"He entered Thailand via Chiang Khong checkpoint on Monday last week and we tracked him down and arrested him at an apartment in Ayutthaya on Tuesday," he said.

"He was not wearing a beard and he had had plastic surgery. He used a Spanish passport with a long, confusing Spanish name."

Indonesia has blamed Jemaah Islamiah, the Southeast Asian link to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, for the nightclub bombings on its resort island of Bali and for the August 5 blast at Jakarta's Marriott Hotel that killed 12.

Thailand's Nation newspaper, citing an unidentified security source, said Hambali had been arrested with explosives and confessed to planning an attack on a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders, including Bush and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, in Bangkok in October.

However, the police general said no signs of explosives were found when Hambali was captured.

"There were no weapons or explosive devices found," he told Reuters.

Hambali was hunted in Thailand last year and is believed to have given the go-ahead for the Bali bombings at a meeting in Bangkok. There were also sightings in neighboring Cambodia, but he managed to stay one step ahead of the law.

Hambali's arrest came in the same week that Thailand enacted its first anti-terrorism law by decree to ensure it was in place before the Asia-Pacific summit.

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=3282552