One of the most hunted terrorist suspects in Southeast Asia, Azhari Husin, a skilled bomb-maker, was killed during a shootout with police this afternoon, Indonesian officials said. Mr. Azhari, a master of disguises | He's now disguised as a dead guy... |
| He won't be that busy anymore... |
| Never a gentle firefight, not even a desultory firefight... |
| Never quiet explosions, never subdued explosions... |
| "I'd recognize that elbow anywhere!" |
Back in Malaysia, he turned serious, and graduated at the top of his class from a technological university. He then went to England, where he earned a Ph.D. from Reading University. His thesis, written in English, was "The Construction of Regression-based Mass Appraisal Models: a Methodological Discussion and an Application to Housing Submarkets in Malaysia."
He became a professor in the Valuation and Property Management Department at the University of Technology Malaysia, where he had a reputation as "an irrepressible joker of a man," Ms. Neighbour wrote. In the mid-1990's, Mr. Azhari (whose name is sometimes spelled Azahari) fell in with a group of fundamentalist Muslims from Indonesia who had gone into exile in Malaysia to escape the repression of the Suharto dictatorship at home. They were members of a group called Jemaah Islamiyah, whose spiritual leader, also in exile, was Abu Bakar Bashir, who is now in jail in Indonesia. According to the authorities, Mr. Azhari first went for military training in the Philippines, which was, and remains, a major training ground for Jemaah Islamiyah recruits. Later, he traveled to Afghanistan, where he received advanced training in explosives at a camp run by Al Qaeda.
A few months after the attacks of Sept. 11, Mr. Azhari escaped capture, for the first time. Singaporean and Malaysian authorities had uncovered activities of Jemaah Islamiyah including plans to blow up the American Embassy in Singapore. Word reached Mr. Azhari, in Malaysia. He apologized to his wife for having to leave suddenly, without explaining why, told her to take care of the children, and fled into the night. A few months later, officials said, Mr. Azhari attended a meeting in Bangkok, which would become one of the most pivotal in the terrorism movement. It was presided over by Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, who was Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant in Southeast Asia. At the meeting, it was decided that it was getting too difficult to blow up embassies, because they were increasingly well-fortified. It was time to go after "soft-targets," Hambali is said to have instructed the group.
Eight months later, in October 2002, a van loaded with explosives was detonated in front a nightclub in Bali. The explosives had been prepared by Mr. Azhari and a colleague from university days, Noordin Top, according to officials. A few months later, the police nearly nabbed Mr. Azhari. He was riding on the back of a motorcycle stopped by the police, who suspected the driver was a member of Jemaah Islamiyah. He was. But the police let the passenger go, not recognizing who he was, or having been paid a bribe - accounts vary. During the weeks before the bombing of the Marriott hotel in Jakarta, in August 2003, Mr. Azhari sat in the lobby sketching the layout, according to the Indonesian police.
The manhunt intensified. Two months later, according to the authorities, the Indonesian police, acting on the basis of intelligence and with help from the Australian police, surrounded Mr. Azhari and Mr. Top in Bandung, a town in Central Java. As the police tightened the net, the two men, with grenades in their backpacks, slipped away.
In Sept. 2004, Mr. Azhari and Mr. Top struck again, officials said, this time with the deadly attack on the Australian Embassy on a busy street in Jakarta. Mr. Azhari drove the bomb-laden vehicle within a few hundred meters of the embassy, got out, and sent the suicide bomber to complete his mission. Mr. Azhari is said to have hopped on a motorcycle, looking over his shoulder as the bomb went off.
He had been a prime suspect as the mastermind of the Bali bombings last month, in which three men wearing backpacks loaded with explosives killed diners at three restaurants. With Hambali in the hands of the C.I.A. at some secret location, and if Mr. Azhari was killed, that leaves Mr. Noordin and a man named Dulmatin as the two most wanted terrorist suspects in Southeast Asia.
Add Zulkarnaean to that list, he's Hambali's replacement as the head of JI. Azahari was the bombmaker and Top's the moneyman. If they manage to get or kill Top, that'll go a long way to bringing an end to JI's financial network.