REMEMBER WHEN

GOLD COAST BULLETIN Friday September 10, 2004

A car-bomb attack outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta bore all the hallmarks of Malaysian terror suspect Azahari Husin, the senior member of an al-Qaeda-linked group, said Indonesia’s police chief.

The attack was similar to car bomb blasts outside the JW Marriott hotel in 2003 and also the Bali bomb blasts in 2002, said General Da’i Bachtiar.

Police say Azahari was the main figure behind the making of those bombs.

He was a senior figure in the South East Asian militant Islamic group Jemaah Islamiah and was earlier named by Malaysian security officials as the likely culprit behind the bombing outside the Australian embassy.

The British-trained engineer has eluded capture for nearly three years, said a Malaysian security official.

”He has the expertise to manufacture the explosives required for a bombing of this scale,’’ he said.

Azahari was believed to be protected by a small circle of Jemaah Islamiah members and may have timed the attack in response to Indonesia’s decision to file terror charges against the group’s reputed leader, Abu Bakar Bashir.

The Government drafted charges against Bashir on suspicion of ordering 2003’s suicide bombing of the Marriott hotel in Jakarta which killed 12.

Azahari and another Malaysian fugitive, Noordin Mohammed Top, are believed to have made the Marriott bomb with dynamite and ammonium nitrate.

The two men narrowly escaped a police dragnet in October 2003.