Posted on 08/15/2003 4:35:04 AM PDT by kattracks
(Reuters) - Hambali, al Qaeda's top man in Southeast Asia and suspected mastermind behind a string of deadly bombings, has been captured in Thailand, handed over to the Americans and flown out of the country, officials said on Friday.
Asia's most wanted man, now clean-shaven and his face altered by plastic surgery, was arrested with a woman by Thai and U.S. officials in Ayutthaya, the ancient Thai capital 80 km (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.
Confusion surrounded the whereabouts of the latest senior al Qaeda-linked radical to be hunted down in the war on terror that Washington launched after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
Hambali, born Riduan Isamuddin, and his wife were flown home to Indonesia, a Thai government minister said. Indonesia's police chief said he was unaware of the transfer and a U.S. official in Bangkok said Washington was unlikely to reveal his location soon.
Others have been held by U.S. authorities at undisclosed locations, but are believed to have been questioned initially at bases in Afghanistan.
President Bush hailed the capture. "He's a known killer. Hambali was one of the world's most lethal terrorists. He is no longer a problem," he said.
Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said Hambali's arrest followed local leads, but would not say where he had been taken.
"We received tipoffs from local people that there were strange-looking people staying around there so we checked their background and passports and realized that they were the people we were looking for," he told reporters in Sri Lanka.
The Muslim cleric, 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 was not wearing a beard and he had had plastic surgery," he said. "He used a Spanish passport with a long, confusing Spanish name."
INTERROGATION STARTS
Hambali is wanted in Indonesia as the suspected brains behind many attacks across the archipelago, including last October's Bali bombings, which killed 202 people in two nightclubs.
U.S. officials said Hambali, thought to be operations chief of Southeast Asia's militant Jemaah Islamiah network and the only man from the region to sit on al Qaeda's military committee, was being interrogated but would not say where.
"Hambali is in U.S. custody and that's all we can say for now," said a U.S. diplomat in Bangkok.
Governments across Asia and in Australia breathed 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.
His fugitive status did not halt his activities, and he was videotaped attending January 2000 planning meetings in Malaysia for the September 11 strikes.
However, officials said they feared 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 Hambali's capture.
"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."
SECURITY TIGHTENED
Police tightened security around a meeting of Asia-Pacific officials in southern Thailand that is preparing the ground for a regional summit in October that Bush is due to attend.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard said no leader would be deterred from attending the summit in Bangkok.
"Any gathering of world leaders carries a security challenge in the era in which we live in, but we're all still going and I can't imagine there'll be any change on that," he said.
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."
Predominantly Buddhist Thailand has 63 million people, six million of them Muslims, mostly living in the southern region bordering Malaysia.
Hambali was first hunted in Thailand last year and is believed to have given the go-ahead for the Bali bombings at a meeting in Bangkok when he shifted JI's focus to soft targets.
He was also sighted in neighboring Cambodia, but had managed to stay one step ahead of the law.
Terror suspect Hambali keeps one step ahead of law
By Ed Cropley
PHNOM PENH, Aug 6 (Reuters) - From high-rise Singapore to the rice-fields of rural Cambodia, the net has slowly been closing in on Jemaah Islamiah, the shadowy Islamic group emerging as a possible suspect in Tuesday's hotel bombing in Jakarta.
But its suspected mastermind -- the mysterious Hambali, a bespectacled Indonesian preacher thought to be the brains behind last year's Bali bombings -- has always managed to keep one step ahead of the law.
The huge car bomb at Jakarta's JW Marriott Hotel which killed up to 16 people on Tuesday confirmed the worst suspicions of many: despite unprecedented cooperation between historically prickly neighbours, Islamic militants can still strike at will.
Police hunting for clues to who blew up a U.S.-run luxury hotel said on Wednesday the explosives and methods resembled those used in the Bali nightclub blasts.
To combat Jemaah's tentacle-like network of "sleepers", funders, sympathisers and bolt-holes in a poorly developed corner of the globe, Western and local intelligence agencies have taken to passing on all sorts of useful tidbits.
Many arrests have followed -- in Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and Cambodia. Hambali has not been among them.
Rumours of his suspected whereabouts have ballooned into scores of possible sightings, from Indonesia to Malaysia to Thailand to Cambodia, nearly all in hard-to-police border areas.
But when the authorities arrive, the bird has already flown.
A senior Cambodian intelligence source told Reuters Hambali, alias Riduan Isamuddin, had been sitting under their noses from September 2002 to March 2003, often in a tourist hotel popular with pot-smoking hippies.
"He shared his time between Koh Kong (along the Thai border) and a backpacker guesthouse in the middle of Phnom Penh," the source said.
Hambali left shortly before Cambodia rounded up four Jemaah suspects: an Egyptian, two Thais and a local Muslim, he said. [Note: This was when Cambodia shut down the Saudi-financed madrassa outside Phnom penh/angkor]
WHERE IS HAMBALI?
Even as Cambodia was denying he was there, authorities in neighbouring Thailand were saying the exact opposite.
Thai police special branch sources, who have suggested he may sometimes be disguised as a woman, said he had been spotted several times across Thailand, including the capital Bangkok.
Black-and-white "identikit" photos were distributed at all border checkpoints, but he still evaded their clutches, leading police to believe he was back in the lawless former Khmer Rouge-controlled zones of western Cambodia.
Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra insisted on Wednesday that Hambali was no longer in the country.
"We have made several checks and found out that Hambali is not in Thailand," Thaksin told reporters. "We are aware of his various names and aliases. Yes, he was here, but not anymore."
Authorities in Southeast Asia are stepping up their own security efforts after Tuesday's blast.
Thailand increased protection at key Western embassies and businesses but rejected fears it could be an easy target in the run-up to October's summit of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), which includes U.S. President George W. Bush.
"We must pay closer attention...since the latest incident showed they have intensified their efforts in this region," Deputy Prime Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh said.
Australia said there could be more attacks in Indonesia in the wake of Tuesday's car bombing and sent police to Jakarta to help with the investigation.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said on Wednesday further attacks could occur to coincide with a verdict in the case of key Bali bombing suspect Amrozi, which is due to be handed down on Thursday, and the treason trial of Abu Bakar Bashir, the cleric accused of heading Jemaah Islamiah.
"We have particular concerns at the moment about central Jakarta, but also other places in Indonesia. There could be a further terrorist attack in the next day or so," Downer told reporters.
That says it all.
How's about we squeeze him for all we can get and run him through a chipper?
Feed what comes out to the hogs.
Butcher the hogs and send 'em to his family for processing.
NAH..too tough on de hawgs.
Thailand has been a quiet but faithful ally since the end of WWII,
(except for a brief period in the early 70's when communist lead students took over.)
HERE IS THE CONFERENCE The hotel is right on the Chao Phraya River. Leaders from major countries in the region will be there.
If he doesn't talk, perhaps he'll be "lost" forever.
Except that once he lands in the U.S., that pesky Constitution with its "due process" rules applies. Gitmo has been used precisely because the USSC has said that Constitutional protections do not apply to foreign nationals not on U.S. soil.
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