How an Al-Qaeda Bigwig Got Nabbed

By Romesh Ratnesar Sunday, Aug. 17, 2003
    • DADANG TRI/REUTERS

    The site of a bomb blast at the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta.

    As the most wanted fugitive in Southeast Asia, Riduan Isamuddin was used to a life on the run. For most of the past two years, he hopscotched across Asia, slipping in and out of Pakistan, Indonesia and Thailand, hiding in safe houses and eluding pursuers from several countries, including the U.S. During that time, Isamuddin—known as Hambali, al-Qaeda's top operative in Asia—allegedly masterminded a string of terrorist attacks, including last October's nightclub bombings in Bali and the bombing of the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta this month. Two weeks ago, Hambali moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Ayutthaya, Thailand, a tranquil, mainly Buddhist town one hour outside Bangkok. He may have hoped to lie low for a while—and, perhaps, plot his next lethal strike. Earlier this year Hambali's former boss, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed—once the No. 3 official in al-Qaeda and now in custody—told interrogators he had given Hambali about $50,000, a U.S. intelligence official told TIME. His instructions were to "do something big."

    But Hambali ran out of time. Last Monday night a fleet of bronze sedans carrying about two dozen Thai Special Branch police forces pulled up near the six-story Boon Yarak apartment building in Ayutthaya. A U.S. official says the Thai authorities were acting on at least two forms of intelligence provided by the CIA. Intelligence officers in the region pinpointed Hambali's location after intercepting a cell-phone call placed to an operative in Indonesia.

    At 10:30 p.m. on Monday, the Thai forces knocked on Hambali's door and then smashed the lock and stormed inside. A college student named Oh, 26, who lives under Hambali's apartment, says she heard a "loud crash" that sounded like a domestic dispute. Minutes later the noise stopped. The police hauled Hambali out and turned him over to the CIA, which moved him to an unidentified country for interrogation.

    The ease with which the Thais captured a man believed to be responsible for as many as 300 civilian deaths stunned U.S. counterterrorism officials. "Pretty cool," says one. "Once we knew who it was, and the locals could gin up the necessary operation, they took him down." Administration officials hailed the arrest as the most significant find since March, when U.S. and Pakistani forces captured Mohammed, al-Qaeda's military commander. Since then, responsibility for recruiting new al-Qaeda operatives and coordinating their activities had largely been turned over to Hambali, whose group, Jemaah Islamiah, originally strived to create a pan-Islamic state but instead has turned Southeast Asia into a terrorist haven.

    News of the arrest was greeted with giddiness at the White House, which crammed the formal announcement of Hambali's capture into President Bush's Thursday address to troops who had recently returned from Iraq. "He is no longer a problem," Bush said. The President didn't know just how relieved he should be. On Saturday, Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said Hambali had been plotting new terrorist attacks, possibly in October, when Bush and others would be attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Bangkok.

    Hambali could prove to be an important asset. CIA interrogators are attempting to pump him for information about future attacks and the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden's dwindling inner circle. According to a U.S. intelligence official, an al-Qaeda detainee told the U.S. that Hambali had been trying to recruit pilots for a 9/11-like plot that might have involved suicide hijackings, but it is not known whether the captive was telling the truth and, if he was, when or where the plot would have taken place. And while it is unlikely that Hambali knows the precise coordinates of bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, there is a chance he has been in recent contact with them, perhaps via e-mail, says Zachary Abuza, a terrorism expert at Simmons College in Boston. If Hambali cooperates, he could also help investigators unlock some mysteries of the 9/11 plot. The U.S. believes that he helped Zacarias Moussaoui, the Moroccan-French operative charged with being the intended "20th hijacker," enroll in flight school in the U.S. And intelligence officials think Hambali was the al-Qaeda leader who set up a 2000 meeting in Malaysia attended by several operatives, including two 9/11 hijackers. "Important people were there," says an intelligence official. "But precisely what was discussed is unclear."

    What the U.S. does know is that Hambali played a central role in the spread of terrorism throughout Southeast Asia. Born into a family of farmers and Islamic scholars in Sukamanah, West Java, Hambali headed off to join the mujahedin in Afghanistan in the mid-1980s. He later moved to Malaysia, where he teamed up with Abubakar Ba'asyir, a fundamentalist Indonesian cleric. In the mid-1990s, Hambali began raising money and recruiting militants to join some jihadist groups. Meanwhile, Hambali established ties to bin Laden, serving on al-Qaeda's consultative council and lending financial and logistical help to the group's plots, including a 1995 plan to blow up 12 U.S. passenger jets over the Pacific.

    Hambali made his debut on the stage of global terrorism in December 2000, when he is believed to have orchestrated a series of church bombings in eight cities in Indonesia, killing 19. After 9/11, Hambali's profile inside al-Qaeda rose when bin Laden ordered him to launch attacks in Southeast Asia to distract U.S. forces from their assault in Afghanistan, says Abuza. Early last year Hambali met with his lieutenants in Thailand and instructed them to attack soft targets—restaurants, bars and nightclubs frequented by Western tourists. Nine months later, Jemaah Islamiah detonated two bombs at two nightclubs in Bali, killing 202 people, many of them young Australian tourists.

    Though the object of a manhunt, Hambali managed to stay on the loose for almost a year. He probably chose to live in the cream-and-pink apartment in Ayutthaya precisely because of the anonymity it offered. Oh and other residents say he rarely left the place, never did laundry and ventured to the local 7-Eleven only at night. "He kept to himself," she says.

    Hambali's flight from justice came to a crashing halt last week. But it's certain that some of his foot soldiers will continue trying to fulfill his murderous aims. "You don't retire from this business," says Abuza, referring to al-Qaeda's remaining operatives. And there is no clear sign yet that the business is slowing down.

    —Reported by Timothy J. Burger/Washington, Andrew Perrin/ Ayutthaya and Jason Tedjasukmana/ Jakarta