To Kill a Bombmaker

By Simon Elegant

Azahari Husin's luck finally ran out. After three years on the run in Indonesia, the master bombmaker--who on several occasions slipped away just before police showed up--was killed last week when a U.S.-trained antiterrorism unit raided a house he had rented in the mountain resort town of Batu in East Java. Azahari, 48, responded to officers' calls for surrender by shooting and hurling 11 explosive charges. A four-hour standoff ended when police shot him before he could detonate the explosives vest he was wearing. His companion then set off a bomb that brought down the roof and ripped both men apart.

Indonesian police sources say they found Azahari's hideout after identifying the three suicide bombers who killed 20 people in Bali on Oct. 1. A massive surveillance operation ensued, trailing scores of suspects with links to the dead bombers. One of those suspects, a 27-year-old Indonesian who calls himself Yayha Antoni, emerged from the Batu house the day before Azahari died. Having tapped his mobile phone, police believed he was going to meet Azahari's chief accomplice, fellow Malaysian Noordin Mohamad Top. Yayha apparently sensed he was being tailed and tried to detonate his vest but was arrested; he later admitted he was a courier passing messages between the two militants and that Azahari was in the Batu house.

In the wreckage, police found what amounted to a bomb factory. A police source says 33 packets of explosives were uncovered--and one was already tucked inside a backpack. The upshot: Jemaah Islamiah, the Southeast Asian network of militants to which Azahari allegedly belonged, was almost certainly planning new attacks, and Azahari had been training new bombmakers. Last Friday security forces found a bombmaking video at a house they suspect Noordin had recently occupied. Police say the tape contained confessions by the Oct. 1 bombers in which they declared they would go straight to paradise upon their death. Says a senior Indonesian police official: "Until we get the other key members, we won't be able to relax."

With reporting by Zamira Loebis, Jason Tedjasukmana