Raid may have sped up bombing
The Age
Wednesday July 22, 2009
NUR Hasbi was a long-time foot soldier for fugitive terrorist Noordin Top, working as a small-time locksmith in Semarang, Central Java, before he allegedly blasted civilians - and himself - to death at the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta last week. He was also a graduate of the school of radical cleric Abu Bakar Bashir.Described by his mother-in-law Sri Lestari as "very patient, very polite and very religious", Nur Hasbi was able to pass himself off as a well-heeled businessman, circumventing security at the hotel.Terrorist attacks last Friday ripped through the Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels, killing nine people, including three Australians. More than 50 people were injured.The bombings may have been hastened by the arrest late last month of the right-hand man of Noordin Top, the suspected mastermind. The arrest of Saifuddin Zuhri, also known as Sabit, showed how close police came to cracking Noordin's network.Apparently acting on information gained from Zuhri's interrogation, police launched a raid on Tuesday last week that uncovered a bomb "identical" to one used on Friday.The day after that bomb was found buried in a Cilacap home, the suicide bombers checked into the Marriott hotel. They put a "Do Not Disturb" sign up for 24 hours while the bombs were assembled. A day later they launched their deadly attack.Indonesian authorities have yet to confirm that Nur Hasbi - also known as Nur Sahid and Nur Said - was one of the suicide bombers. The badly mutilated and headless corpse makes identification difficult. But police called his family to Jakarta from their home village of Temanggung to provide a DNA sample.And police intelligence on Monday visited Abu Bakar Bashir's boarding school in Al Mukmin in Ngruki, a suburb of the city of Surakarta, to examine its records to confirm Nur Hasbi's attendance. After initial denials, officials from the school - which has spawned numerous militants - confirmed that Nur Hasbi graduated in the class of 1994."I don't have any memory of him," said Wahyuddin, the principal of the pesantren.Nur Hasbi's classmate, Asmar Latin Sani, was the suicide car bomber who attacked the Marriott hotel a first time in 2003, killing 12 people.Security footage shows Nur Hasbi checking in at the Marriott, walking through a metal detector. His bag did not pass through the detector. A security guard gave it only a cursory examination. Chances are it was packed with explosives.The footage shows that the suicide bomber - dressed in the suit and baseball cap he wore on Friday - carried only one bag. On Friday he had two, suggesting more explosives were smuggled in later.Nur Hasbi's mother-in-law said she didn't recognise Nur Hasbi as the man in the security footage, saying he "walked differently" in a TV interview. Even so, she hadn't seen him in three years, and was not permitted to speak to him.The operation was clearly planned for months. A third bomb, assembled in a laptop casing, was inexplicably left behind despite being "active", raising suspicions that the bombers were rushed, because of the arrest of Zuhri.Zuhri was Noordin's point man for his last known attempt to launch a terrorist attack, a plot last year to blow up a cafe frequented by foreign tourists in Bukitinggi, West Sumatra.The plot was averted only after the suicide bomber pulled out when he saw a Muslim family walk into the cafe.Zuhri is a nephew of Baharudin, Noordin's father-in-law.Baharudin, also the imam of a radical mosque in Cilacap, is the owner of the house where the bomb was discovered last week. He remains at large."This [Friday's bombing] would have been planned for a long time but [the arrest of Zuhri] would have made them move faster because it might lead to this particular cell being uncovered," said terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna, from Singapore's Nanyang University.Four of the nine people killed have not been positively identified. Two are the suicide bombers and it appears the other two are Dutch nationals.The Dutch embassy revealed yesterday that two of its citizens - a couple - were reportedly at the Ritz Carlton hotel at the time of the explosions are unaccounted for.
© 2009 The Age
Share This