JAKARTA, July 19 — One of Asia’s most wanted terrorists, Noordin Mohammed Top, and his Jemaah Islamiah network are among the chief suspects behind the twin Jakarta hotel blasts that killed nine and injured 55, analysts say as Indonesian police sift through clues in the country’s 10th terrorist bombing.
The elusive Malaysian-born Noordin is said to be in Cilacap, central Java, and analyst Sidney Jones said today the July 17 blasts is likely linked to the terrorist cell operating there.
“From the modus operandi, this is clearly linked to Noordin Mohd Top,” the security ministry’s anti-terror desk chief, Ansyaad Mbai, was quoted as saying by state-run Antara news agency.
“There are links to the Cilacap cell,” Jones told Indonesian broadcaster MetroTV.
She also speculated that the terrorist cell could have obtained foreign funding as they had stayed in the JW Marriot hotel itself, which suffered its second terrorist bombing after the first one in 2003. The other luxury hotel bombed on Friday was the Ritz Carlton Hotel.A retired senior South East Asian police official involved in counter-terrorism agreed that Noordin and the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) could be behind the latest attacks.
“It has the signature of our friends,” he said, adding it was interesting that the group could carry out two jobs at the same time.
Security experts consider Noordin to be one of the most charismatic jihadists operating anywhere in the world. His ability to make deadly bombs, which have killed and maimed hundreds of innocent people, and convince others to blow themselves up in suicide attacks while staying one step ahead of the police himself have made for a deadly mix.
“The ability to get people to blow themselves up requires a certain talent, and he has it,” Professor Zachary Abuza, a JI expert who advises governments on its tactics and structure, was quoted as saying by the Singapore Straits Times.
Referring to last Friday’s bomb blasts in Jakarta and Noordin, Nasir Abbas, a former JI leader turned police informant who has worked with police on investigations into Indonesia’s last three terrorist attacks, said: “I’m 200 per cent sure this was his work.”
Noordin is believed to have been one of the best recruiters and chief strategists for the JI terror network.
He was nicknamed “the moneyman” because he was a major fund raiser for the group with direct ties to Al-Qaeda in Pakistan, said Prof Abuza, a specialist in South-east Asian politics and security issues at Simmons College in Boston, who travels frequently to South-east Asia.
While much of JI turned away from attacks on Western and government targets, Noordin has remained the potent leader of a minority faction that seems to revel in the mass killing of civilians.
Analysts speculated that he drifted away from the main JI structure because of a disagreement about such attacks on soft targets.
He is accused of involvement in the 2002 bombings in Bali, which killed more than 200 people, mostly Australians.
Noordin is also believed to have masterminded the Jakarta Marriott bombing in 2003, the attack at the Australian embassy in Jakarta in 2004 and the bombing of Bali restaurants in 2005.
And while the Indonesians have nabbed dozens of terrorists, Noordin has shown a knack for narrow escapes.
In October 2003, he and another Malaysian master bomb-maker Azahari Husin fled from a police raid on their hideout in Bandung city, West Java.
Noordin escaped arrest again when the police raided several homes in Central Java in October and November 2005.
He reportedly evaded capture in East Java last year after seeking treatment for a liver illness.
Indeed, police reportedly had him in their sights last week in an operation that, had it been successful, might have prevented Friday’s attacks.
Bombs were discovered at an Islamic boarding school in Central Java last week. The explosives were the same as those that ripped through Jakarta’s Ritz-Carlton and Marriott hotels, said anti-terrorism official Ansyaad Mbai.
Noordin’s Indonesian wife was reportedly arrested in the raid. But her husband apparently slipped away yet again.
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