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| Southeast Asia |
| JI front line moved to Bangladesh |
| 2003-09-26 |
| Hambali and other senior members of Jemaah Islamiah have responded to the terror crackdown in Southeast Asia by moving the organisation west to south Asia, identifying Bangladesh as a refuge and setting up a sleeper cell of future leaders in Pakistan. Another lawless hellhole, good choice. A senior Asian intelligence officer with access to key interrogation records of Hambali’s interviews conducted after his arrest in Thailand last month told The Weekend Australian the JI leader was about to relocate to Bangladesh when he was caught in the city of Ayutthaya, north of Bangkok. Talking, is he? The officer said he believed one of JI’s most wanted men, Malaysian accountant Zulkifli Marzuki, could already be in hiding in Bangladesh. The Weekend Australian has also learned that Hambali’s terrorism plans for Bangkok initially included planting a bomb at the city’s airport. But when his Malaysian accomplice, Mohamad Nazir bin Lep, who has previously only been identified as Lilly, caught a bus to Ayutthaya, he noticed that planes taking off from the airport flew low over an elevated highway. The pair decided to attack a plane with a shoulder-fired missile, the intelligence official said, but added that Hambali had not named the targeted airline. Rumor is it was a Israeli airline. He confirmed US officials were interrogating Hambali, Lep and another Malaysian, Mohamad bin Farik Amin, also known as Zubair, in Bagram, Afghanistan. Ah hah, I called it right. The officials were providing country-specific information from their interrogations to their regional allies, intelligence officials in Asia indicated. One official said the information supplied concerned only their particular country, and "was not really useful" because the material was already known. Sounds like we are being careful about what we are giving out, concerned about leaks. Like this article. The Weekend Australian has also learned that Zubair intended to become a suicide bomber, and that he and Hambali travelled to Cambodia, where they lived for six months, in order to recruit students as suicide bombers. "He thought that Cambodians have gone through so much (horror) that they were sad in the head," the official said, referring to the country’s Khmer Rouge genocide years. Don’t think he found any takers. The news came as an Indonesian consulate official in Karachi said Hambali’s brother, Rusman Gunawan, who was arrested there this month as part of a sweep of Indonesian and Malaysian students, had transferred $US50,000 ($73,820) from Pakistan to Hambali in Indonesia on orders from a Saudi Arabian man in Thailand. There’s that Saudi money again. Consular official Temu Alam said Gunawan, 27, had told him during a consular visit: "Someone named Toha from Saudi Arabia met me many times when I was in Thailand. He asked me to send money to Indonesia from Pakistan." Malaysia’s deputy Home Minister Chor Chee Heung said the 13 Malaysians and six Indonesians arrested were being groomed as future leaders of JI. JI previously has been considered an exclusively Southeast Asian organisation. Sending their best and brightest overseas for education. Thought they’d be off the radar and safe in Pakistan. This may be a bigger bust than I thought. |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #4 Sounds like there's only one clear solution to the problem: pull the plug at the source. That may be a bit more radical than invading Iraq, where a true psychopath held power for thirty years. The Soddies have always cultured the image that they were our friends. We really need to discover some truly horrible perfidity on their part - more directly linked to the Royals, before we could possible invade Soddyland. If I were leading the NSA, the Soddy area would become a very high priority for my agency. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2003-9-26 5:54:47 PM |
| #3 Too tangled. They want to keep the money going to Hamas. They want to keep the money going to the Wahhabi cultural warriors. They even want to keep the money going to legitimate charities -- and there are some. Because it flows in such quantities, and because so much of it's designed to be hidden, a certain portion of it will continue going to the Qaeda-associated Bad Guys whether they want it to or not, simply because the individual money men along the way want it to. They're also making their own fine distinctions, ranging from outright false to sophistic. If we can't convince the Washington Post that the Chechen thugs are cynical banditti, out for their own personal power no matter how many dead innocents it takes, how're we going to convince the Soddies, where they pray for them every Friday? |
| Posted by: Fred 2003-9-26 2:12:05 PM |
| #2 I hope that's true about the money drying up. It's possible the sources are shifting tactics. What's clear is the Soddi's role as chief banker. Now that we're outta there, it's time to turn the screws on them. They've made some good moves against cells but I don't see them going after the money sources. Too close to home? |
| Posted by: Rex Mundi 2003-9-26 1:45:54 PM |
| #1 It seems to me that the War on Terror is now really taking a big bite out of the operations of Al-Q and associated terror organizations. The headlines here on Rantburg just in the last 3 weeks or so show that the money is drying up or at least harder to hide, the leadership is now moving operations or negotiating with other countries for shelter (and having a harder time in those negotiations), their leaders and planners are being captured and are giving up important information, and they are now starting to worry about infiltrators in their ranks. It's a job well done, and thanks to President Bush, the Coalition forces, the intel guys, and the Blogosphere for their contributions! |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2003-9-26 12:40:59 PM |