Filed by KOSU News in World News.
August 9, 2009

Indonesian police say they are awaiting DNA tests to determine whether a man killed Saturday in a gun battle with police is in fact Southeast Asia’s most wanted man. Noordin Muhammad Top is blamed for a string of bombings since 2002, including last month’s hotel attacks in Jakarta.

Dead or alive, authorities say Noordin has been a busy fugitive in the past few months. Authorities believe he is behind last month’s suicide bombings of the JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels in Jakarta that killed nine people.

Indonesian National Police Chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri says Noordin was also planning a suicide car bomb attack on President Susilo Bambang Yudoyono. Police say two of Noordin’s associates were killed in a raid Saturday on a house just a few miles from the president’s home. The raid yielded a large quantity of explosives and a vehicle rigged to carry them.

Danuri says the decision to target the president was made at a meeting on April 30 chaired by Noordin, who wanted the president punished for allowing the execution of three men convicted of taking part in the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people — mostly Australian tourists. The Malaysian-born Noordin helped plan those attacks and almost every major bombing in Indonesia since.

Once a senior operative in the Southeast Asian terror network Jemaah Islamiyah, Noordin left the organization several years ago and formed his own splinter group. In addition to last month’s hotel attacks, his group is also blamed for the 2005 Bali bombings that killed another two dozen people.

Indonesian security forces have rounded up or killed several hundred militants in the past several years, but Noordin has consistently eluded capture, protected by a small but well-disciplined group of supporters and sympathizers.

Danuri says he’s not sure if one of the bodies recovered in Saturday’s raids is, in fact, Noordin’s. And many analysts are expressing skepticism that a man who has evaded police for seven years has been killed.

A talented fundraiser and planner, Noordin also had a gift for attracting new recruits to the cause and persuading them to become suicide bombers. If he is dead, analysts say, it will deal a huge blow to other militants’ plans to carry out similar attacks in the future. Copyright 2009 National Public Radio