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| Southeast Asia |
| Hambali kept low profile in quiet Thai tourist town |
| 2003-08-15 |
| More details coming out on the arrest. Hambali, Southeast Asia’s most wanted man, kept a low profile in the quiet Thai tourist town where he was captured, neighbours said on Friday. "I think I saw him twice. He acted like an ordinary person," one neighbour said of the mystery man who lived in flat 601. She did not describe the circumstances under which she saw Hambali. The bespectacled Muslim cleric, blamed for last October’s Bali nightclub bombings and on the run since 2000, was captured on Tuesday in the modest flat in Thailand’s ancient capital Ayutthaya, handed over to the Americans and flown out of the country to a secret location. The famous undisclosed secret location. The Bunyarak apartments lie on a quiet street at the centre of the town. A food shop and a laundromat occupy the ground floor. The nearest police station is just two km (one mile) away. The shattered apartment front door of 601 was marked by the bootmarks of security agents who carried out the raid. Security Agent Jackboots, available at fine stores everywhere. One woman, who was afraid to give her name, said the building had been mostly empty on Tuesday due to a national holiday. "I never saw him, but when I came back I heard the police had come to arrest foreigners here," she told Reuters Television. Hambali, now clean-shaven and his face altered by plastic surgery, was arrested with a woman on Tuesday in a joint operation with the CIA. U.S. officials say he is being questioned at an undisclosed location outside Thailand. "Where, we just can’t say." Ayutthaya, 80 km (50 miles) north of Bangkok and with a population of about 80,000, is a popular daytrip for tourists seeking out temple ruins dating back hundreds of years. It is also home to a small Muslim community, among whom Hambali was apparently seeking to hide. He had crossed into Thailand last Monday from Laos, using a fake Spanish passport, officials said. Been to Passport’s R’Us, I see. As the suspected operational brains of the shadowy militant Southeast Asian Jemaah Islamiah network, Hambali was the region’s most wanted man, accused of masterminding last year’s bloody Bali bombings among many other deadly attacks. Aged about 40, he was the main link between Jemaah Islamiah and Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network, intelligence sources say. He might know where Binny’s Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra credited the arrest to leads from locals and intelligence agency cooperation. "We received tipoffs from local people that there were strange-looking people staying around there so we checked their background and passports and realised that they were the people were looking for," Thaksin said during a visit to Sri Lanka. After going underground three years ago, rumours of his suspected whereabouts had ballooned into scores of possible sightings, from Indonesia to Malaysia to Thailand to Cambodia. A Cambodian intelligence source told Reuters that Hambali had been sitting under their noses from September 2002 to March 2003, often in a tourist hotel popular with pot-smoking hippies. I think I’d have to be pretty stoned to consider taking a trip to Cambodia. He left shortly before Cambodia rounded up four Jemaah suspects. In Thailand, black-and-white "identikit" pictures were distributed at all border checkpoints earlier this year, but he managed to slip away. Thai police special branch sources suggested he may have tried to disguise himself as a woman. I’d hire some more female customs officers to check anyone in a burka, just to be sure. |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #3 Good hunting! |
| Posted by: seafarious 2003-8-15 4:26:47 PM |
| #2 More from Bangkok Post: Local intelligence sources said information they had obtained indicated Hambali was in Thailand to plan a terrorist attack during the Apec summit during Oct 20-22, to be attended by world leaders including US President George W. Bush. ``From what we got, we are quite confident he was here to plan terrorist attacks during the Apec summit. He was not here just to seek safe haven as he claimed during interrogation but he was here to map out a plan, prepare weapons and set up an operative cell for the planned attack,'' said an informed intelligence source who played a role in Monday's arrest. Another defence source said Hambali had sought refuge in Thailand during the past two months and his arrest was directly linked to the arrest of another senior Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) figure, Yazid Zubair, who was arrested in southern Thailand in July. ``His (Yazid Zubair's) capture eventually led us to Hambali's trail,'' said the sources. Zubair, also known for his strong ties to al Qaeda, was believed to be a critical link in JI's financial dealings, with particular responsibility for operations in Cambodia and Thailand. Hambali, dubbed by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as the ``Osama bin Laden of Southeast Asia'', was accompanied by his wife Norran Viza, 35, a Malaysian, and another two assistants when he was arrested on Monday night on a tip from US secret agents. During questioning, Hambali, who travelled on a fake Spanish passport, was quoted as admitting being actively involved in the Bali resort bomb attack on Oct 12, 2002, which killed 202 people, mainly Australians. Hambali denied he was in Bangkok to sabotage the Apec meeting. ``He just says that he wanted to seek safe haven in Thailand with his wife because Thailand is receptive and safe,'' said the source. This was not the first time that a suspected JI member was arrested in Thailand. Several have been arrested here in the past several years. JI had around 20 members operating in Thailand, the source said. An intelligence source said Hambali entered Thailand in 2000 and made a second visit in March 2002, where he was spotted in the South. The source said Supreme Commander Gen Surayud Chulanont, who is director of anti-terrorist centre, had told his forces to search for Hambali in March this year when he received intelligence reports from allies which suggested Hambali had again entered Thailand. |
| Posted by: Steve 2003-8-15 3:37:18 PM |
| #1 A few more details: 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 50 miles north of Bangkok, a senior Thai general said. "A special flight from the United States picked him up at Bangkok airport Wednesday morning," said the general, who declined to be identified. 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. 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." |
| Posted by: Steve 2003-8-15 2:15:05 PM |