Hambali planning next attack

BANGKOK — Hambali, the suspected mastermind of al Qaeda’s bombing campaign in Southeast Asia who was captured last week, was plotting terror attacks against a Bangkok summit President Bush is due to attend, Thailand’s prime minister said yesterday.

Hambali, an Indonesian whose real name is Riduan Isamuddin, had planned to make Thailand a base for terror operations, but his arrest — and three of his associates, since June — has uprooted his terror network, Jemaah Islamiyah, from the country, the Thai leader said.

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, set for Oct. 20-21 in the Thai capital, is expected to draw at least 20 world leaders, including Mr. Bush.

“The result of investigations show that Hambali came to Thailand not only to seek a safe haven but he also planned to make a move during the APEC meeting,” Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra told reporters. He refused to elaborate.

“He came here to work and was using Thailand as a base for committing acts of terror. Investigations reveal some connection to APEC, but we still have to investigate further,” Mr. Thaksin said.

Thailand’s porous jungle and river frontiers and lax security at border posts made it a tempting place to hide for Jemaah militants. But its cells have been more prominent in other nations of the region — Malaysia and Indonesia. Indonesia — scene of the group’s deadliest bombings — increased security, fearing revenge attacks during Independence Day celebrations this weekend.

The 39-year-old Islamic cleric was captured by CIA agents and Thai forces in a raid Monday on his apartment in the ancient temple city of Ayutthaya, 50 miles north of Bangkok. Thai military sources say he was handed over to U.S. investigators and flown out of the country Wednesday. Mr. Thaksin would not comment on his whereabouts.

Bush administration officials say Hambali was ordered to recruit suicide bombers after the September 11 attacks, and U.S. investigators will seek to determine whether he had any success with the assignment.

Hambali, who is said to have trained under Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in the 1990s, is reported to have been close to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the September 11 organizer captured earlier this year, and is believed to have hosted a meeting of senior al Qaeda operatives, including two September 11 hijackers, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in January 2000.

But in Southeast Asia, he is seen foremost as the militant who brought al Qaeda-style attacks to several countries in the region, including the October suicide bombings in Bali, Indonesia, that killed 202 persons, mostly foreign tourists.

Mr. Thaksin said the arrests of three Hambali associates in recent months led to Asia’s most-wanted man. Among those caught by Thailand was Zubair Muhammad, a Malaysian believed to have been instrumental in Jemaah Islamiyah’s financial dealings, Thai and Malaysian newspapers reported yesterday.

The trail was exposed by an “irregular money transaction” noticed by investigators, the Thai premier said in his weekly radio address to the nation.

This “resulted in the arrest of the first case, the second, the third, and now we have got the fourth man — Mr. Hambali — who is regarded as the last one in our land,” he said. “Finally we have got them all.”

The London Sunday Telegraph, quoting a senior Thai defense official, reported that Hambali was betrayed after Jemaah members fell out over money.

In a rare dispute within the tightly knit network, members of a Jemaah cell in Singapore were angry that comrades in Thailand had frittered away a sizeable sum of money they had sent to fund a suicide bombing in the kingdom.

When the Singaporeans were later arrested, they opened up to investigators, according to the defense official.

Meanwhile, Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri plans to ask Mr. Bush to allow Indonesian investigators to question Hambali over his involvement in the Jakarta and Bali attacks, Foreign Minister Hasan Wirayuda said.

Thai authorities are believed to have known Hambali was in the kingdom in January last year, when he planned the Bali bombings at a meeting in Bangkok. He is believed to have returned to Thailand more recently, using a fake Spanish passport to enter from neighboring Laos, local newspapers reported.