JAKARTA - Indonesian counter-terrorism forces killed a man believed to have been one of the masterminds of the 2002 Bali bombings on Tuesday during a raid in the capital Jakarta, police and reports said.
The man was among three people killed in two raids on the city's
outskirts.
Police did not disclose the identities of the three, saying "a forensic
examination was still being carried out".
But a police source told AFP one was believed to be Dulmatin, a leader
of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) militant group and an Al-Qaeda-trained
bomb-making specialist for whom Washington is offering a
10-million-US-dollar bounty.
It is not the first report of his death. In 2008, Philippine military
officials said they believed Dulmatin's body had been exhumed on the
island of Tawi-tawi.
The security ministry's counter-terrorism chief, Ansyaad Mbai, told AFP
that "if it's true that it's him, we will be very grateful that the most
wanted terrorist has been killed in Pamulang. It will be a big relief
to us."
At a news conference, national police spokesman Edward Aritonang said
that one of the three was killed in a gunfight with counter-terrorism
police at an Internet cafe in Pamulang city west of the capital.
Witnesses saw a body bag taken from the cafe into an ambulance following
the gunfight. In a later raid a few kilometres from the first incident
two other people on a motorcycle were shot dead, an AFP photographer
witnessed.
Police confirmed that the operation was linked to a counter-terrorism
raid in Aceh province in which a militant training facility was
discovered. Sixteen suspects have been arrested so far and charged under
counter-terrorism laws.
The series of operations comes ahead of a planned visit by US President
Barack Obama this month.
Believed to be in his late 30s, Dulmatin is accused of helping JI plan
and carry out the Bali bombings, which killed 202 people on the
Indonesian resort island, most of them foreign tourists.
JI is a Southeast Asian extremist group inspired by Al-Qaeda. Its
ultimate goal is to unite Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and the
southern Philippines into a fundamentalist Islamic state, using
terrorist attacks to destabilise existing governments.
The group has carried out more than 50 bombings in Indonesia since April
1999, according to the Brussels-based International Crisis Group,
including the 2002 Bali bombings and attacks on the resort island in
2005 that killed 20.
The last such attack killed seven people and two suicide bombers in two
luxury hotels in Jakarta last July.
Malaysian terror mastermind Noordin Mohammad Top, killed in September
2009, allegedly organised the attacks as part of his Al-Qaeda-inspired
"holy war" on the West. He was falsely reported to have been killed a
month earlier by local media.
- AFP/ir
more horse-crap..........more misinfo..............
JI + Al-Qaeda = all made up............