Elusive Hambali learned from bin Laden

RIDUAN Isamuddin, also known as Hambali, is a 38-year-old Islamic scholar who was born in Indonesia's West Java province.

The region was a hotbed of Islamic militancy in the 1940s and 50s, and the home of a massive religious rebellion called Darul Islam (House of Islam) which was finally crushed by government troops in the early 1960s.

Intelligence officials claim he learned his deadly craft in Afghanistan where he worked with Osama bin Laden, dreaming of a day when an Islamic state would be declared across much of Southeast Asia.

In the 1980s, Hambali linked up with another fundamentalist cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir allegedly Jemaah Islamiyah's spiritual chief who is now facing trial for treason and other bombings in Indonesia.

Along with other militants, they fled a crackdown by Indonesia's then dictator Suharto and escaped to Malaysia in 1988.

There Hambali and Bashir taught at a school in Johor spreading al-Qaida's radical brand of Islam and setting up Jemaah Islamiyah a militant network with cells in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and other nations in Southeast Asia.

Indonesian intelligence officials say that during this period Hambali spent at least some time in Afghanistan, where he co-operated closely with Osama bin Laden.

After Suharto was ousted in 1998, Bashir and other Jemaah Islamiyah leaders returned to Indonesia.

Hambali, who by then had become the group's operations chief, was said to have travelled widely throughout the region, organising physical and religious training in Malaysia for activists while sending recruits to camps in Afghanistan and to rebel bases in the Philippines.

Since then, he has been linked to several major plots against the United States and in Indonesia.

In a joint report to the United Nations, Australia and the United States identified him as a close associate of Ramzi Yousef, now imprisoned in the United States for his involvement in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center.

They reportedly later collaborated in an unsuccessful plot to blow up 12 airliners flying from Asia to the United States.

The report said Hambali was a "key figure" linking al-Qaida and Jemaah Islamiyah, and a close associate of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged September 11 mastermind who was captured earlier this year.

Hambali was one of six suspects wanted in the on Bali bombing the worst attack since September 11, in which Hambali is also accused of providing logistical support. He is also a leading suspect in the JW Marriott bombing in Jakarta.

Hambali has been accused of planning a series of bombings in Manila, Philippines, that killed 22 people and injured more than 100 in December 2000.

He is also believed to have arranged the January 2000 meeting of Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi with a senior al Qaida operative, Tawfiq Attash Khallad, one of the masterminds of the USS Cole bombing later that year.