MALANG, Indonesia (Reuters) - One of Southeast Asia's most wanted Islamic militants, Malaysian Azahari bin Husin, was killed during a shoot-out with Indonesian police in East Java province on Wednesday, the national police chief said. General Sutanto made the announcement in the city of Malang, not far from the town of Batu, where the shoot-out took place.Dubbed the "demolition man" by Malaysian newspapers, Azahari was suspected of being the top bomb maker in Jemaah Islamiah, a shadowy network seen as the regional arm of al Qaeda and which has carried out several major bombings in Indonesia.
"Tied to a chair, and the bomb is ticking
This situation was not of your picking
You say that this wasn't in your plan
And don't mess around with the demolition man
I'm a walking nightmare, an arsenal of doom
I kill conversation as I walk into the room
I'm a three line whip, I'm the sort of thing they ban
I'm a walking disaster, I'm a demolition man"
Additional: Jakarta (AsiaNews) â Police Chief General Sutanto confirmed today that Malaysian-born terrorist Azahari bin Husin was dead. âIt is 99.9 per cent certain that one victim [in Batu] was Dr Azahari,â he said. Azahari is thought to have drowned whilst trying to escape from a special anti-terrorist squad of the police after a two-hour operation in Batu, a mountainous area 90 km south of Surabaya, the capital of East Java province.
| I think "drowned" is a translation error. |
MORE, EFL: A man suspected of being Azahari Husin, one of Asia's top terror suspects, blew himself up after being cornered by police overnight but Indonesian authorities will have to wait at least a day to identify the body, a lawmaker and police said.
Azahari, a Malaysian from the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaaah Islamiah (JI) militant network and known as the "Demolition Man", was strongly suspected of being one of three men who detonated explosives and killed themselves after a shootout with police in the town of Batu, East Java province. If confirmed, his death would be a major coup for Indonesian security services against JI - which was suspected in another deadly bombing on the resort island of Bali last month.
National police chief General Sutanto said he could not immediately say whether one of the three was Azahari, who is suspected of masterminding a string of deadly blasts in Indonesia and supplying bombs used in the 2002 Bali bombings. "Information like that we can only ascertain tomorrow (Thursday)," he said when reporters asked him to comment on reports of the death of Azahari. "We will take every effort to identify the three, including through the use of DNA and showing the bodies to witnesses who know Azahari."
However Djoko Susilo, a member of Parliament who spoke with Sutanto at the scene of the shootout, said that based on the information he was given: "I am 95 per cent convinced that Azahari is already dead there.
"But scientifically we still need to ascertain the death with a post-mortem, or more precisely through DNA testing because the bodies inside were in bits and pieces."
When police chief Sutanto was asked how he knew Azahari might be among the three, he said: "From information obtained from one of the perpetrators whom we have arrested in Semarang earlier today." He identified that suspect by the initials CH. A police source in Semarang, the capital of neighbouring Central Java province, said that three people were arrested about half an hour before the 7.30pm (AEDT) raid in Batu.
Mr Sutanto said the shootout erupted when the men refused to surrender to police after they encircled their modest house. "They shot first and it hit a police officer who was wounded," he said, adding that after the shootout there were 11 blasts, "the last one being quite strong".
"The last one appears to have been a suicide. They (the three) all died." He said the bodies remained in the house and police would not enter until any explosives remaining there were detonated by a bomb squad.