Suspected Indonesian terrorists led double life in Malaysia
Suspected Indonesian terrorists led double life in Malaysia
Jalil Hamid, Reuters, Sungai Manggis, Malaysia
To the villagers of Sungai Manggis in Malaysia, he was just another part-time kebab seller and peddler of potions and cures.
Today, Riduan Isamuddin is better known as Hambali, Southeast Asia's most-wanted man.
Landlord Mior Mohd Yuhana Hamidun, who rented shacks set amid banana trees to Hambali and his friends, recalls a short, mild- mannered, stocky and bespectacled man with an ethnic Chinese wife.
"They and their families used to come to my house for Eid al- Fitr parties," Mior told Reuters at his home in the village in Malaysia's west coast state of Selangor.
"We even posed for pictures," he says, casting his mind back to the shared celebrations at the end of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadhan.
Today, he refers to his Indonesian tenants as "the terrorists".
Malaysian and Singaporean police have identified Hambali, 36, as the link between Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and a radical Southeast Asian religious group called Jamaah Islamiyah (JI).
The self-styled preacher, they add, trained in Afghanistan.
That might explain why people in Sungai Manggis, which is set back from the busy road between the port of Klang and the town of Banting, have a memory of a man who spent a lot of time away from home.
He was certainly away from home in February 2001 when a pair of Indonesian secret policemen came looking for him in his home among the banana trees.
That was before the alleged Jamaah Islamiyah and al-Qaeda links came to light and the pair were checking leads into bombings of churches on the Indonesian island of Batam in December 2000.
Since then, say security officials, Hambali has flitted between Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Thailand.
"Everyone we've spoken to who has met Hambali says he's a quiet person, but that when he speaks, he's very convincing," a senior Malaysian security official told Reuters.
Mior, who himself fell under suspicion of belonging to Jamaah, initially regarded Hambali and the other exiled Indonesians living on his doorstep with fond respect.
"Hambali kept himself busy by selling kebabs and traditional medicines," he recalls.
Hambali's ethnic Chinese wife, from Malaysia's Sabah state, and her family had converted to her husband's faith.
Mior, who took 100 ringgit (about US$26) a month in rent, and his Indonesian tenants prayed together.
Much has happened since then.
"How do I know they are terrorists?" Mior asks. "One night in February last year, two Indonesian secret police officers came down and asked for Hambali. That's when I suspected something was wrong."
Mior says he last saw Hambali in November 2000.
Regional security sources say the last reported sighting of Hambali was in the Thai capital Bangkok in February this year.
Today, Hambali might have disappeared, but several of his old neighbors are in custody in neighboring Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country.
Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, a militant preacher who denies being Jamaah's spiritual leader, had the shack next door. He is now under guard in Jakarta, after being arrested in October.
Imam Samudra, a chicken butcher who also preached, lived a few doors away. He was caught in November and accused of being the main planner behind the Bali attacks.
Indonesian police say another Indonesian preacher called Mukhlas, also known as Ali Gufron, recently took over as Jamaah's operational planner from Hambali.
He too lived in exile in Malaysia, near the southern city of Johor, but was arrested in Indonesia on Dec. 3.
Police there say Hambali passed Mukhlas the $35,500 needed for the vehicle and materials used in the Bali attack.
Another of Hambali's neighbors in Sungai Manggis, Iqbal Abdul Rahman, alias Abu Jibral, is being held Malaysia's Kamunting detention camp.
Mior, spent two months in a jail cell this year, detained under Malaysia's tough Internal Security Act.
Hambali, who moved to Sungai Manggis in 1993, had permanent residency in Malaysia and a building contractor's license.
"Ba'asyir on the other hand was a full-time preacher, teaching Koran and Islam in and around Kuala Lumpur," says Mior, who remembers both Samudra and Iqbal also leading prayers.
He recalls that unlike the other 12 Indonesian families congregated around Ba'asyir in Sungai Manggis, Hambali and his wife, Noralwizah Lee, were childless.
She too has since left the village.
"They didn't draw much attention to themselves, we saw the religious classes they were holding as just another way of supplementing their income," a Malaysian security officer said.
They soon learnt different.
"When I was arrested, the police told me my surau (prayer house) was a base to topple the Malaysian government," says Mior.
But ideas rather than weapons were the most dangerous thing found at Sungai Manggis.
"When police searched their houses, they found no guns, no explosives, only religious books."
Ba'asyir -- Page 11