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Whatever Became of Hambali?
Written by Our Correspondent
Monday, 02 March 2009
where's Hambali?Somebody is going to have to figure out what to do with
Southeast Asia's most notorious terrorist
Now that US President Barack Obama was promised to close the Guantanamo
Bay camp for political prisoners - unindicted terror suspects and assorted
Muslims caught in the wrong place at the wrong time - what will happen to the
alleged "Osama bin Laden of Southeast Asia"?
Languishing - and probably being periodically tortured - for three years
at a CIA location and then in his Cuban cell, Riduan Isamuddin, better know by
his undercover name of Hambali, is in principle wanted in four countries -
Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand. But those countries have been
more than happy to let the US take care of him - at least so long as he doesn't
have the chance to appear in court and have the evidence against him tested by
defense lawyers, and others who may not be entirely convinced that he was quite
the terror mastermind of popular repute.
Hambali is currently classified by the US as an "enemy combatant", a
"high value" detainee but that has so far been a dubious device meant to keep
him in Guantanamo rather than face trial in the countries where his alleged
crimes were committed.
An Indonesian national born in West Java and originally called Nurjaman,
Hambali had links to jihadists in Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand. The most
spectacular of the terror acts ascribed to him was the Bali bombing in 2002 in
which 200 people died. He was described as the main link between Al Qaeda and
Jemaah Islamiyah having been in touch with Arab Muslim extremists since the
early 1990s and been funded by them. He was also said to be close to Abu Bakar
Bashir, the Indonesian cleric later convicted, on scant evidence, of being
behind the Bali bombing.
Hambali went underground in 2000 after a series of church bombings in
Java were ascribed to him and he was wanted by Malaysia and Indonesia at the
time he was caught living in Ayudhya in Thailand in 2003 with his Malaysian
wife. Previously he had lived in Malaysia from about 1991 after returning from
Afghanistan/Pakistan where he had gone in the mid1980s to help the fight
against the Soviets.
Instead of being tried in Thailand as an illegal alien or sent to his
home country and location of his most serious alleged crimes, or to Malaysia or
the Philippines he was whisked away to one of the CIA's various detention
centers and almost certainly subject to the torture procedures given the green
light by a Bush administration in effect run by then vice president Dick Cheney
and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Can he be charged with anything even half credible in the US? His time
among the militants in Afghanistan long pre-dates Bin Laden's presence there.
The bombing and other allegations against him have all been in respect of
activities in Southeast Asia.
In any event, though it may be easy to prove that he preached jihad and
was part of an Islamist push for the establishment of a Muslim caliphate in the
region, linking him directly to the bombings could be much more difficult. In
the case of the fiery Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, despite Australian and
other pressures for vengeance after the Bali bombing, it proved impossible to
do more than show him to be the spiritual inspiration of jihadist ideas. Direct
links to known conspirators were absent. He was however luckier than Hambali.
The Indonesian government - then headed by President Megawati Sukarnoputri -
resisted efforts of the US to have him "rendered" into US custody.
But if now Hambali has the opportunity to appear in court, whether in the
US or Indonesia, it may be possible to ascertain whether he was more than a
preacher of extremist notions. If not, he should be protected by both the US
constitution and by Indonesia's tradition of tolerance for multiples
interpretations of Islam.
Meanwhile US custody, however uncomfortable, is likely a better option
than being rendered to Singapore and detention at Whitley Road. It was from
there that fellow jihadist Mas Salamat Kastari allegedly made an utterly
improbable escape last February 27, or not. More likely, he either died at the
hands of his interrogators, or was a mole for the authorities all along and was
now being released with a new identity. Singapore continues the probable
fiction to this day that he still lurks somewhere in the island nation.
Indeed, the closure of Guantanamo and the appearance in court of
detainees plus the stories of detainees released without charge should give a
clearer idea of how effective the War on Terror was against actual terrorists,
or how much of it was also a smoke and mirrors game to silence Islamists and
use the threat of terror as excuse for locking up people for their opinions or
for political convenience.
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