Police finally corner the one that got away
The Age
Saturday September 19, 2009
So many times the elusive Noordin Top had left the authorities empty-handed and embarrassed. THERE was apt irony in the demise of the fugitive terrorist mastermind Noordin Mohammed Top in a hail of gunfire early on Thursday morning.Many times in the past seven years €” most spectacularly in the raid on a farmhouse in Temanggung last month €” Indonesian police believed they had found the man responsible for deadly attacks in Jakarta and Bali.Yet time and again they came up empty-handed.As heavily armed commandos descended on a house near the central Java city of Solo on Wednesday night, cutting the electricity and erecting a 500-metre perimeter as they prepared for a siege, police reckoned they had cornered a key figure, Noordin's senior aide Urwah, but not the kingpin himself.It was to the delight and surprise of authorities that, as the bodies were pulled from the ruins of a house nine hours later, one clearly resembled Noordin."We were chasing another target," Indonesia's police chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri said."It was a gift. The Almighty gave us something bigger."Since the July bombings of two Jakarta hotels that broke a four-year lull from terrorist attacks, counterterrorism police have dramatically stepped up the hunt for Noordin.For a week in August they were close to him, at one stage getting some grainy video footage of a man they believed was Noordin.The trail went cold until a breakthrough on Wednesday afternoon with the arrest of two men, Rohmad Puji Prabowo and Supono.They told police there were "dangerous men" in the house and as Supono was a student from Urwah's Koran reading class, police believed they had the long-time associate of Noordin in their sights.By 11.30pm, members of Detachment 88, Indonesia's crack anti-terrorism unit, were in place.Solo, a long-time militant stronghold and favoured hiding place of Noordin, was already under surveillance. Police believed Noordin may have used the mass movement of Indonesians returning home to their villages for the end of Ramadan this weekend as a cover to switch locations.Erry Subagyo, a local police chief, told the Jakarta Post: "We stepped up our security measures after getting this information. In fact, we sent [Detachment 88] members to monitor trains in the area and to watch the flow of people travelling for the holiday."By midnight, police attempted to break down the door of the house they believed held Urwah.Shots were fired back and a siege ensued until early morning.A forensic police officer quoted by Republika newspaper said the state of Noordin's body when it was pulled out at 7 the next morning indicated he probably died in that first volley of gunfire.His body was found bent over in the toilet of the house, a handgun and a rifle next to his body and bullet wounds in the back of his head, ribs and thigh.Beside him was a backpack containing a laptop computer and documents, a potentially rich source of intelligence on the future plans of the network and the whereabouts of members of Noordin's cell.Ken Conboy, a Jakarta-based terrorism analyst and author, said Noordin had developed "very good tradecraft about how to remain undetected" after almost seven years on the run."After the bombing at the hotels and the Temanggung raid [in August, when police incorrectly believed they had killed Noordin] there was egg on the face of the authorities," he said. "They redoubled, quadrupled their effort and brought some real talent back into the system that had drifted away. It paid off."
© 2009 The Age
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