Top terror suspect shot after being found hiding in Abbottabad, Pakistan

[Al-khiyal]

Bali bombing suspect Umar Patek 'arrested in Pakistan'

March 30, 2011 -- One of Indonesia's top terror suspects, wanted in connection with the 2002 Bali bombing, has been captured in Pakistan, reports say. Umar Patek, a suspected member of the militant group Jemaah Islamiah (JI), was detained earlier this year, local and foreign intelligence sources say. Jakarta is sending a team of police officers to confirm his identity.

The 2002 attacks on nightclubs in the Indonesian tourist hub left 202 people dead, many of them foreigners. The U.S., which lost seven nationals in the attack, was offering a $1 million (£625,000) reward for his arrest. Umar Patek is the only major suspect for the attack who has not been killed or arrested, says the BBC's Kate McGeown in Jakarta. As well as the Bali bombings, he is alleged to have been involved in at least three other attacks in Indonesia - and to have links with militant groups in the southern Philippines and al-Qaeda members in other parts of Asia, our correspondent says. There are no details about where or how the arrest was made, nor what he was doing in Pakistan.

Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group told the BBC that his arrest could yield important information. "Umar Patek is critical to understanding the terrorist networks in South East Asia. And because he appears to have been arrested in Pakistan, he's also going to be critical to understanding the networks between South Asia and South East Asia," she said. "He's in a position to know more than almost anyone else in the region exactly what the strengths, networks, contacts, finances and so on of each of these groups is."

Jemaah Islamiah (JI), which has links to al-Qaeda, has a long track record of bomb attacks in Indonesia. A suicide bomb attack in July 2009 targeted two luxury hotels, killing seven people. JI's goal is the establishment of an Islamic state in Indonesia and in other parts of South East Asia.

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Umar Patek is close to Osama bin Laden

April 1, 2011 -- Terrorism Observers from the State Intelligence Academy in Jakarta, Mardigu, suspected that Umar Patek who is a known as a mentor or teacher of the deceased terrorist leader Noordin M. Top was trying to enter Afghanistan through Pakistani territory when caught by the Pakistani Police. Mardigu said that in addition to Hambali, Umar Patek, who has an Arab blood line, was an Indonesian citizen who is known to be close to al-Qaida leader, Osama bin Laden. Umar Patek is a known international terrorist and a fugitive in at least three countries, Indonesia, the U.S. and the Philippines.

According Mardigu, Umar Patek roles was very big in various terrorist acts in Indonesia. “We see that in the Bali bombing one and two, he was very instrumental as a field commander. He coordinates and so forth, including the provision of explosive materials and other things. Very, very important, he was the teacher of Noordin (M. Top). Umar Patek is not new or a foreigner in Pakistan. He is part of an international network, he is a man of Al-Qaeda. The suspected terrorist leader Umar Patek alias Umar alias Abdul Ghoni Arab was reportedly captured in Pakistan. He was allegedly planning terrorist attacks to commemorate the 10 years anniversary of the 11 September 2011 attacks with other Al-Qaeda leaders.

Head of Public Relations Division of Police Headquarters, Inspector General Anton Bahrul Alam said the Indonesian Police have sent a joint team to Pakistan to ensure the validity of the Umar Patek arrest information. According to Anton, the team will conduct a physical check of Umar Patek. If they can confirm that the man arrested was indeed Umar Patek, the Indonesian police will need to make sure whether he had committed crimes under Pakistani laws. “We need to first check the validity of the information,” said Anton. “For that we would send people over there to make sure that it really is Umar Patek. If so, we will see if he has committed any crime in that country.” If Umar Patek had been involved in criminal cases in Pakistan, he added, it will be very difficult to extradite him to Indonesia. Umar Patek is suspected as an alumnus of the Afghan force from the 1990s. He is rumored to have once joined the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in Mindanao in 1995.

[Al-khiyal]

Militant's road ends in Pakistan

ABBOTTABAD, Pakistan, April 14, 2011 (AP) — A hailstorm was lashing this Pakistani hill town when Abdul Hameed's son came to his room with an unusual request: He had come across a foreign couple, cold and shivering in the street, and could he give them food and shelter for a few days? Hameed had spare rooms on the second-floor that he occasionally let out since his older children had left home. His wife urged him to let the couple stay. "They were human beings in need, what else could I say?" said the retired accountant. The couple were mysterious, never leaving their room upstairs, Hameed said, not even to go to the house's sheltered courtyard with its views over pine-clad hills. Hameed's youngest daughter left the guests a tray of food three times a day only to return to find it barely touched, he said. Around nine days later, the identity of the male guest became clear, when a squad of heavily armed Pakistani intelligence agents raided the home. "Keep your mouth shut and your hands up", they told Hameed and his family as they went room to room and then up the stairs. Two shots rang out, and minutes later they hauled the man, bleeding, out the building.

The run of good luck had ended for Umar Patek, an al-Qaida-linked Indonesian militant who for 10 years had been on the run from a $1 million American bounty on his head, for allegedly helping build the bombs used in the 2002 bombings of nightclubs in Bali that killed 202 people. Pakistani officials had kept Patek's detention on January 25 secret until two weeks ago, when the Associated Press first revealed word of it. But until now, where or how one of the biggest terror arrests under the Obama administration went down was not publicly known. The details highlight how Pakistan continues to be a draw for Islamic militants from around the world despite the risks of traveling here. His case also illustrates the durability of the wide-ranging international connections among militants. Patek had intended to travel along with two French militants to North Waziristan, the Afghan border region where al-Qaida's top command is based, according to a Pakistani intelligence official briefed on the 40-hour operation. Many of the terrorist plots against the West over the past decade have originated from the territory. The two French militants were also arrested, separately from Patek, the official said. A French counterterrorism official on Thursday confirmed the arrests of the two. He could not verify the other details, but said he would be "surprised" if either had links to Patek.

Patek, who trained with al-Qaida in Pakistan before the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, was able to remain plugged into transnational terror networks despite being one of the world's most wanted militants. Southeast Asian authorities had said he was hiding out in the southern Philippines for much of the last 10 years, fighting and training with an allied insurgent army. Indonesian and Filipino security officials said Patek left the southern Philippines in late May last year before traveling to the Middle East. One official said he was believed to have attended a meeting of Southeast Asian and Mideast militants in the holy city of Mecca.

Patek, a slightly built 40-year-old, is now believed to be in a Pakistani army hospital being treated for bullet wounds to his legs, according to Indonesian officials. Hameed said Patek looked like "a slaughtered chicken" when he was brought down from the upstairs room, but the seriousness of his injuries has not been revealed. There were two bullet holes in the room, one in the window and one in the ceiling. But Hameed said there was considerable blood in the room's en-suite bathroom and outside the door. Pakistani officials have not said whether Patek was armed. There has been no word on the whereabouts of his wife, who has been described as either Indonesian or Filipino. Questions also remain over his fate, and there are signs he may be caught up in tensions between Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency and the CIA, which have previously cooperated during terror arrests and would like access to him. Islamabad has said it will not hand Patek over to the CIA and that he will be sent to Indonesia. But officials in Jakarta don't appear that keen to have him, and have expressed doubts whether they could make charges stick against him for his alleged role in the Bali attacks.

Abbottabad is in northwest Pakistan, one of the first towns on the famed Karakoram Highway that leads to the Himalayas and China and less then a day's drive from the Afghan border. During the era of British rule, it was a major garrison town and it remains so today, with Pakistani troops now occupying the barracks built and lived in by the region's former rulers. Officials did not say how or why Patek ended up there, but his arrest followed the detention of an alleged al-Qaida facilitator in the town called Tahir Shehzad, who worked as a clerk at the town's post office, a squat building just across the road from the British-era St. Luke's Church. Tahir had been under surveillance since last year when he was spotted in Abbottabad with an Arab terror suspect, said the intelligence official, who like all Pakistani spies is not permitted to give his name. When he left town on January 23, agents followed him to Lahore, Pakistan, where he was arrested with the two French militants, whom he had picked up from the international airport there. They were "French al-Qaida" operatives, one of Pakistani origin, the other described as a white Muslim convert, the official said. "Patek and the French had plans to travel to North Waziristan," the official said. Shehzad led officers to Hameed's house. Patek and his wife arrived in Pakistan around five months ago traveling on forged Pakistani visas, the official said, but he did not disclose if the agency knew where they had been staying before Abbottabad.

Patek was once a leading member of Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian militant network whose core was made up veterans of the "jihad" against Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Most of the top leadership and many foot soldiers have been arrested or killed since 2002 in a widely praised, U.S- assisted crackdown. Patek was perhaps the last of his generation on the run. His travels are similar in some ways to that of Muhammad Jibriel, an Indonesian currently serving time in Jakarta over hotel bombings in 2009. Jibriel, whose father was also in the Afghan "jihad", was found guilty of obtaining funding for the bombings while visiting Saudi Arabia in 2008. By his own admission, he also traveled to North Waziristan before his arrest.

Hameed's son, Kashif, was arrested alongside Patek, and Hameed has not heard anything of him since. The ISI frequently detain people for months, if not years, without informing their relatives, much less charge them with any crime or present evidence of wrongdoing. Answerable to no one, the institution is feared by many Pakistanis. Hameed maintains that his son, a telecommunications student in a college in Abbottabad, was innocent and had no militant links. "He was not a terrorist, he was just a boy, a nothing, a baby," he said as he shuffled to the door with his visitors, a pair of pink "Croc" sandals on his feet. "Those two people trapped my son and my family. What can I expect now? What can I expect now?"