INDONESIA’S MOST wanted terrorist Noordin Top was one of four people killed in a raid on a house near the central Java city of Solo, the national police chief announced yesterday.
Police believe Top, a Malaysian, was the most dangerous Islamist terrorist in southeast Asia. He was involved in four suicide bombings in Indonesia since 2003 and had been hunted for nine years.
He led a splinter cell of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), a regional terrorist group, and in recent years was considered al-Qaeda’s main operator in southeast Asia.
Arrested terrorists said he was driven by a vehement hatred of the West, in the wake of the US-led war on terror.
Sidney Jones, a terrorism expert with the International Crisis Group think-tank, said Top’s death was “very significant”.
“It takes out of commission the person who most wanted to launch attacks on foreign targets,” she said, but cautioned that the threat was far from neutralised. “The number of people who have [similar] capacity to provide leadership of a splinter group who are sufficiently charismatic and educated is five or six.”
Top’s latest operation was the July 17th double attack on Jakarta’s JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in which suicide bombers, targeting a meeting of predominantly foreign executives, killed seven people. Gen Bambang Hendarso Danuri, Indonesia’s chief of police, said Top’s body was identified by his fingerprints. “We are therefore 100 per cent certain that this is Top,” he said.
Despite the July bombings, Indonesia’s efforts to combat Islamist terrorism have been regarded as quite successful since the first big attack after 9/11, in Bali in 2002.
Hundreds of suspects have been arrested and prosecuted, rather than being detained without charge as happens in neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore.
The government has also invested much time, money and effort in a counter-radicalisation programme. This has involved, among other things, paying for alleged terrorists’ children’s education and welfare.
Top was initially a key JI recruiter and financier, working in Indonesia with fellow Malaysian terrorist Azahari Husin until the latter was killed in a police raid in November 2005. Top then broke away from JI, believing it was insufficiently radical, and formed his own cell. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009