Posted on 11/13/2005 6:01:15 AM PST by Valin
UNTIL the last minute of his life at 3.30pm last Wednesday, the logistics skills that the Bali bombing mastermind known as the “Demolition Man” had polished at Reading University did not desert him. As a team from Indonesia’s elite police unit, Detachment 88, crept into place around his hideaway, Azahari bin Husin, 48, was working with an accomplice on the explosive devices that had made his name.
They had more than 30 small charges with intricate electronic settings, which police experts think were intended to detonate larger bombs. Computer disks, several mobile phones and jihadi tracts littered the main room of the small house. It was the kind of operation at which Azahari excelled, putting his training in statistics and logical analysis to work in planning a sequence of bombings. Indonesian intelligence sources believe he was plotting a Christmas Eve massacre in churches, clubs and hotels.
A rapid police analysis in the last 48 hours of computer material and documents found at the site has left senior officers in no doubt of the plan for a Christmas blitz aimed at killing foreigners and stirring up communal hatred. The attacks would have been centred on Bali and Jakarta, they believe. Fortunately for the intended victims, the explosives demolished Azahari’s house instead and ended the “Demolition Man’s” career in Al-Qaeda.
After hundreds of deaths, thousands of man hours and millions of dollars expended on an intensive international covert operation, it came down to 18 commandos and 50 policemen closing in on two of the most dangerous men in Asia. Azahari had the blood of 28 Britons slaughtered in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings on his hands. They were among 202 innocents who died in the outrage. After Bali came a suicide bombing in 2003 at the J W Marriott hotel in Jakarta, where the jihadis killed Indonesian staff.
Last year Azahari personally led a bungled suicide attack on the Australian embassy which betrayed his callous methods. The man at the wheel of the van was not told he was on a one-way mission. Azahari bailed out seconds before the blast and, as an Australian source remembered it yesterday: “We picked a bit of the driver out of the trees a month or two later.” A handful of Indonesians died.
Azahari’s terrorist pedigree was impeccable. After studying in the 1980s at Reading, where he was remembered as “perfectly normal”, he fell into the company of extremists on his return home to Malaysia. They were members of a religious studies group founded by the radical Indonesian preacher Abu Bakar Bashir and by the late Abdullah Sungkar, spiritual founders of Jemaah Islamiah, the local “affiliate” of Al-Qaeda. Jemaah Islamiah preached the dream of an Islamic superstate to be imposed across the patchwork of races, religions and cultures in this part of the world. It was a vision rejected by most Indonesians.
That did not deter the extremists. Azahari took part in a crucial meeting in Bangkok in 2002 with a terrorist known as Hambali, who was close to Osama Bin Laden. The conversation set in motion a trail of havoc unbroken even after Hambali was seized by the CIA. Nor did sentiment come into it. Azahari had married an academic, Nur Aini, in a love match that produced a son and a daughter. When he walked out on the family, abandoning a wife gravely ill with cancer, he said he had found “a greater cause, to serve God”.
But after Bali, the Indonesian government — weakened by years of political chaos and financial crisis — suddenly recovered its nerve. At meetings between the CIA station chief in Jakarta and the head of the Indonesian police, the Americans began handing over sensitive information. The police, long demoralised and underpaid, were given training by the FBI and the Australian federal police, while nations that had lost citizens in the Bali bombings lent a willing hand. “The Indonesians still talk about how the Scotland Yard forensics guys came out and, instead of searching the ground for microsamples, told them to look up at the telegraph poles and trees. They’d never thought of that — and nor had we,” said an Australian source. “That was Northern Ireland experience.” Out of the Bali investigation, which put the key bombers behind bars where they await execution by firing squad, was born Detachment 88 (Detasement Khusus). Funded by America to the tune of $8m (£4.6m) a year, it is Indonesia’s first real anti-terrorist unit.
Yet as one outrage succeeded another, Azahari and his lieutenant, a Malaysian named Noordin Top, eluded capture. In 2003 the police came close to snatching them in the town of Bandung. But they were seen carrying packs in a crowded street and, fearing a calamity, the team held back. Then came the night that an adviser to the Indonesian national intelligence agency calls “Bali 2”. On Saturday, October 1, three suicide bombers blew themselves up at a beachfront fish restaurant and a downtown cafe in Bali, killing 19 people. This time the police were poised. “The forensics and technology were much better and they went to work fast,” said a western expert in Jakarta. Within minutes of the blasts, mobile phone networks on Bali were shut down to stop terrorists using mobiles to detonate any more bombs. The Indonesians had also become expert on a mobile phone tracing system. That forced the terrorists to fall back on couriers with oral or written messages — a practice that gave the police their break. It came with the successful identification of the three suicide bombers, which led police to the central town of Semarang. There they arrested a courier who was carrying letters.
The real treasure, though, was a video captured in the raid. It has not been released but the national police chief, General Sutanto, said it shows the three “Bali 2” bombers explaining they were about to die for a noble cause. Police had trailed the courier to a house in Batu, a hill town once frequented by Dutch colonialists, where Azahari and an accomplice, Arman, were living under the names of Yahyah and Budi. At 2pm on Wednesday two sports utility vehicles pulled up outside. Heavily armed men from Detachment 88 formed up as dozens of plainclothes officers cleared neighbours away and snipers scrambled onto rooftops.
The two may have elected to go out in a blaze of glory, knowing that Noordin might avenge them. He is still free, as is a bomb-making expert known as Dulmatin on whose head America has put a $10m reward. At 3.05pm the police shouted an ultimatum. Shots came from the house. A confused exchange of fire began. At 3.25pm a loud bang was heard, apparently from a device hurled at police. Five minutes later a bigger blast blew the tin roof off the house and set off a series of smaller explosions. The “Demolition Man” was found in one piece, Arman in fragments. An autopsy discovered a bullet through Azahari’s heart and his suicide belt intact. In the last seconds, it seemed, it was the disciple, not the master, who had the strength to push the lethal button.
Original story
Bali mastermind killed in shoot-out
The Age ^ | 11/10/05 | Mark Forbes
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1518756/posts
Pong
And I hope the survivors are few and far between, lonely and about to meet what they think is a reward.
mc
But don't you think that's way too harsh? Here, in a far more "civilized" land, we'd gently and kindly "put them to sleep" in a room which is painted a "calming" color. I mean, wouldn't it be wrong to "upset" someone who'd murdered and maimed women and children?
How many americans do you think know the Bali mastermind is dead, and that our gov't has trained and funded the Indonesians who got him? Why do we see Bush's job approval ratings ad naseum, and never read storeis like these in our local papers and CNN?
CNN is just trying to promote the likes of FR. /snicker
Because the function of the MSM is to bring down the Bush presidency. (And, on a grander scale, to support maximally socialist causes. I do wish Bush employed his veto pen more often however; once would be nice. Ditto for recisions)
I really do hope that when they finally get to meet Allah, that The Good Allah gives them 72 virgins and all of them look like Helen Thomas. Now that would be a just reward for these killers and cretins!
I quote Marcellus Wallace (Pulp Fiction):
"if he goes to Indo-China I wan't a nigga hiding in a bowl of rice ready to pop a cap in his ass"
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