Fugitive suspected after Australian embassy bomb kills seven
A bomb attack near the Australian Embassy in Indonesia today in which at least seven people were killed may have been the work of a British-trained engineer who has eluded capture for nearly three years, Malaysian security officials said.
Azahari Husin, a Malaysian, is one of Asia’s most wanted men and a member of the al-Qaida-allied Jemaah Islamiyah terror group. He has been linked to numerous bombings in Indonesia, including the Bali attack that killed 202 people in 2002.
“We believe Azahari is behind this,” a security official said on condition of anonymity. “He has the expertise to manufacture the explosives required for a bombing of this scale.”
Today’s powerful blast in Jakarta killed at least seven people and wounded close to 100, witnesses and police said. Australian officials said no-one inside the heavily fortified compound was hurt.
Azahari is believed to be protected by a small circle of Jemaah Islamiyah members and may have timed the attack in response to Indonesia’s decision this month to file terror charges against the group’s reputed leader, militant cleric Abu Bakar Bashir.
The government is drafting charges against Bashir on suspicion of ordering last year’s suicide bombing of the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta, which killed 12 people.
Azahari and another Malaysian fugitive, Noordin Mohammed Top, are believed to have made the Marriott bomb with dynamite and ammonium nitrate, a fertiliser that can be transformed into explosives.
The two men narrowly escaped a police dragnet on October 31 in Bandung city in Indonesia’s West Java province.
Azahari, a British-trained engineer and former university lecturer, and Noordin fled Malaysia to escape a nationwide crackdown against Islamic militants after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US.
Azahari had close relations with Indonesian cleric Riduan Isamuddin, known as Hambali, who was considered Jemaah Islamiyah’s operations chief before his arrest in Thailand last year.
In February, Indonesia arrested 40-year-old Malaysian called Amran in the city of Solo and claimed that he admitted taking part in the bombing of churches in nine Indonesian cities on Christmas Eve of 2000.
Amran has also been accused of transporting explosives to Java that were allegedly used by Azahari and Noordin to make the Marriott bomb.
