A suspected mastermind of the Bali bombings was killed in a police raid in Indonesia in the latest blow to an Islamist militant movement in the country.
Dulmatin, who once trained with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, was one of three militants killed in a shootout with police at an Internet cafe, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said yesterday.
“Today I can announce to you that after a successful police raid against the terrorists hiding out in Jakarta yesterday, we can confirm that one of those that was killed was Dulmatin, one of the top Southeast Asian terrorists,” Yudhoyono said in a speech to the Australian parliament in Canberra.
The series of police raids that led to Dulmatin’s death will be seen as a coup in Indonesia’s fight against Islamist radicals ahead US President Barack Obama’s visit from March 20 through March 22.
Analysts, however, said that Dulmatin’s emergence in Indonesia with a new group showed a worrisome ability of Indonesian militants to forge international links, including with al-Qaeda-affiliated outfits.
Indonesian police shot dead Dulmatin and two others in a series of coordinated raids on the southern outskirts of Jakarta on Tuesday.
An electronics expert, Dulmatin, was a top bomb technician for the Jemaah Islamiah (JI).
Authorities say he helped plan the suicide bombings that ripped apart two nightclubs in Bali and killed 202 people in 2002.
He fled to the southern Philippines in 2003 and the US government had a US$10 million reward for his capture. The 40-year-old Javanese was said to have been wounded after escaping a raid by Philippine security forces.
Indonesia’s counter-terrorism unit, Detachment 88, has launched raids across the archipelago in the wake of the discovery of a militant Islamist training camp in Aceh Province last month.
Aceh Governor Irwandi Yusuf was quoted by the Jakarta Post as saying on Tuesday the group planned to set up a Southeast Asian jihadist network in Sumatra.
Analysts said Dulmatin had the capability to succeed Noordin Mohammad Top, a Malaysian-born militant and bomb maker killed by police last year during a raid in central Java.
Top, who set up a violent splinter group of JI, masterminded a series of bombings including suicide attacks on the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta last July.
Sidney Jones, an expert at the International Crisis Group, said the new group was also a splinter of JI, likely calling itself the Aceh branch of al-Qaeda for Southeast Asia (“Tandzim al-Qoidah Indonesia Wilayah Serambi Makkah”).
Jones said the militants were probably planning attacks, but the recent arrests and deaths should have damaged their capacity to carry them out for now.
She also said the re-emergence of Dulmatin in Indonesia showed the worrying extent of the international links its militants have forged.
“This means that there probably was far more coordination with the Philippines over the last five years than we had any appreciation of,” Jones said.
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