Word: hambali
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...Hambali ran out of time. Last Monday night a fleet of bronze sedans carrying about two dozen Thai Special Branch police forces pulled up near the six-story Boon Yarak apartment building in Ayutthaya. A U.S. official says the Thai authorities were acting on at least two forms of intelligence provided by the CIA. Intelligence officers in the region pinpointed Hambali's location after intercepting a cell-phone call placed to an operative in Indonesia. At 10:30 p.m. on Monday, the Thai forces knocked on Hambali's door and then smashed the lock and stormed inside. A college student...
...necessary operation, they took him down." Administration officials hailed the arrest as the most significant find since March, when U.S. and Pakistani forces captured Mohammed, al-Qaeda's military commander. Since then, responsibility for recruiting new al-Qaeda operatives and coordinating their activities had largely been turned over to Hambali, whose group, Jemaah Islamiah, originally strived to create a pan-Islamic state but instead has turned Southeast Asia into a terrorist haven...
News of the arrest was greeted with giddiness at the White House, which crammed the formal announcement of Hambali's capture into President Bush's Thursday address to troops who had recently returned from Iraq. "He is no longer a problem," Bush said. The President didn't know just how relieved he should be. On Saturday, Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said Hambali had been plotting new terrorist attacks, possibly in October, when Bush and others would be attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Bangkok...
...Hambali could prove to be an important asset. CIA interrogators are attempting to pump him for information about future attacks and the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden's dwindling inner circle. According to a U.S. intelligence official, an al-Qaeda detainee told the U.S. that Hambali had been trying to recruit pilots for a 9/11-like plot that might have involved suicide hijackings, but it is not known whether the captive was telling the truth and, if he was, when or where the plot would have taken place. And while it is unlikely that Hambali knows the precise coordinates...
What the U.S. does know is that Hambali played a central role in the spread of terrorism throughout Southeast Asia. Born into a family of farmers and Islamic scholars in Sukamanah, West Java, Hambali headed off to join the mujahedin in Afghanistan in the mid-1980s. He later moved to Malaysia, where he teamed up with Abubakar Ba'asyir, a fundamentalist Indonesian cleric. In the mid-1990s, Hambali began raising money and recruiting militants to join some jihadist groups. Meanwhile, Hambali established ties to bin Laden, serving on al-Qaeda's consultative council and lending financial and logistical help...