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Southeast Asia
Indonesian police in royal blunder
2003-01-16
Indonesian police thought they had caught Asia's most wanted man - but instead arrested a Javanese royal.
Oops!
The police raided a train on Tuesday and arrested a man they thought was Hambali, an Islamic scholar believed to be the operations mastermind of the al-Qaeda-linked regional Islamic group, Jemaah Islamiah. They questioned their captive for seven hours before realising their mistake. The man in custody was a cousin of the highly respected sultan of Yogyakarta, Hamengkubuwono 10th.
Yup, that's his name.
"I told them the truth, but the investigators remained adamant that I was Hambali," Acun Hadiwidjoyo told the Jakarta Post newspaper. "They distrusted me because Hambali has lots of false names."
Doesn't everyone?
Mr Hadiwidjoyo, 45, is said to closely resemble the fugitive wanted by Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines in connection with a series of bomb attacks in the region. He was arrested as he was travelling from the central Javanese town of Solo to Jakarta, said Yogyakarta police chief Major Richard Nainggolan. Police had received a tip-off that Hambali, whose real name is Riduan Isamuddin, was on the train.
Hambali is accused of arranging a meeting of two of the 11 September hijackers with other al-Qaeda figures in Malaysia in January 2000, and of being behind other plots to blow up Western targets in the region. Indonesian police have admitted making several false arrests in the early stages of the investigation into last year's Bali nightclub bombing.
Posted by:Steve

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