AUSTRALIA'S most watched woman, Rabiyah Hutchinson, and her eldest daughter were once at the apex of Jemaah Islamiah's first known attempt at setting up a terror cell in Australia. An investigation by The Australian has revealed that Ms Hutchinson, who married JI leader Abdul Rahim Ayub, also married off her eldest daughter to her husband's twin brother, the Afghani-trained jihadist Abdul Rahman Ayub. The Australian has been told the daughter was about 16 at the time of the marriage to her uncle, who had been sent to Australia with his brother to set up the JI cell known as Mantiqi4. When approached by The Australian last week, Abdul Rahman Ayub refused to comment on the marriage. It is understood the marriage was shortlived and that the couple had no children.
"So why'd you get a divorce, Abdul?"
"I hated her guts." |
It has also been discovered that Ms Hutchinson, now 53, has been married eight times -- twice to suspected terror leaders. When she married in 1984, Abdul Rahim Ayub was her third husband.
| The one before that was the guy with the hat. |
After they broke up in 1996 she remarried several times. In 2000 she married an al-Qa'ida member and confidant of Osama bin Laden, the Egyptian-born Mustafa Hamid, or Abu al Walid al-Masri. At the time, Hamid was a senior member of al-Qa'ida and worked closely with bin Laden, but later split with him over ideological differences.
"Binny! Are you tryin' to get us all killed?"
"If y'don't like it, get the hell out!"
"Well, I don't like it!"
"Throw him out, boyz!" |
The blonde Ms Hutchinson's marriages, her good looks and startling blue eyes have prompted some to refer to her as the Elizabeth Taylor of JI. But a member of the Islamic community in which she lived in Sydney said Ms Hutchinson was widely disliked and her views were considered archaic. "She was very anti-Western," he told The Australian. He said there was also an oft-recounted story about her days in Afghanistan in the 1980s during the war against Soviet forces. "She was considered such a troublemaker the mujaheddin wanted to kill her," he said.
"Mahmoud! Let me borrow your rocket launcher! I'm going to kill that woman!"
"But why, Ahmed?"
"I hate her guts!" |
The story went that it was her brother-in-law, Abdul Rahman Ayub, who saved her. On another trip to Afghanistan at the time, Ms Hutchinson was accompanied by her then husband, Abdul Rahim Ayub. Ms Hutchinson, through her lawyer Peter Erman, has declined to comment on the revelations but she has previously denied any involvement in terrorism.
"She does not wish to assist you in publishing more lies about her by giving you a detailed response," Mr Erman said in an email.
| "I got nuttin' to say to youse! Nuttin'" |
Inquiries by The Australian have revealed that Ms Hutchinson was born Robyn Mary Hutchinson in Mudgee, central-western NSW, in August 1953. The Australian has been told that her parents have died and that her siblings have spread across Australia but she is no longer in touch with them.
| "They don't like her, either!" |
After what friends described as an unhappy life she headed to Bali on a holiday in about 1970. She loved Bali, married a Buddhist and stayed on the island. Despite the birth of a daughter, the marriage did not last.
| The Buddhists couldn't stand her, either, huh? I think we can see a pattern emerging... |
She moved to Jakarta and then married another Indonesian man, named Bambang Wisudo, and they had two daughters together. The oldest, Suniyah, is living quietly on Sydney's northern beaches, but she does not attend the local mosque or mix with the Islamic community as her mother and stepfather once did.
| "They remind me too much of me Mum." |
Suniyah's younger sister, Rahma, was born in 1982 at Manly hospital on Sydney's northern beaches. Rahma was married in 1999 at the age of 16 to Khaled Cheikho, one of the 22 men arrested in Sydney and Melbourne last year during the counter-terrorism Operation Pendennis. Ms Hutchinson married Abdul Rahim Ayub in 1984 and she lived in the Jakarta areas of Tanah Abang and Depok. It is understood Ms Hutchinson speaks Indonesian as well as Arabic and spent much of her time in Indonesia undertaking dawa, or Islamic missionary work.
"It's her again, Bambang!"
"Close the windows! Pretend we ain't home!"
"Gawd, I hate that woman!" |
Nasir Abas, a former JI member who has turned informer, said he was aware of Rabiyah but knew little about her. "It is the JI culture -- you never know the background of others' wives," he said.
| "Every once in awhile, of course, you had to ask yourself: 'Where do they get these people?'" |
Ms Hutchinson and Abdul Rahim Ayub had four children: Mohammed, 21, and Abdullah, 19, Mustafa, 16, and their sister, Aminah. They live together in Yemen with stepsister Rahma. Mohammed and Abdullah and their friend Marek Samulski were released from a Yemeni jail last week seven weeks after they were arrested on suspicion of involvement in terrorist activities. No charges were laid against them.
| "Yez got nuttin' on us, coppers! Da witnesses is all dead!" |
Mohammed and Abdullah were born in Darwin after Ms Hutchinson and Ayub had returned to Australia in 1985. The family moved to Melbourne, staying in Footscray and West Sunshine until 1990. They moved to Sydney, where she met Jack Roche, the Islamic convert from Perth who became the first person jailed in Australia for terrorism-related offences. After the couple separated, Abdul Rahim Ayub moved to Perth before fleeing the country in the days after the 2002 Bali bombing. Abdul Rahman Ayub was deported to Indonesia on immigration visa offences.
Ms Hutchinson then travelled extensively overseas with her children, including visits to Egypt, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
| Where'd the money come from? Air travel isn't free. |
She spent several years in Afghanistan, working as a midwife, until the attacks on the US on September 11, 2001. During her time there, she was a conduit for Australians arriving in Afghanistan, and she met "Jihad" Jack Thomas and his wife, Maryati. Since returning to Australia, she has been under constant surveillance by ASIO and has moved at least five times in the past few years. At one of those addresses, in Wiley Park, southwest Sydney, the tenants complained they were still receiving letters addressed to her from Centrelink two years later. |