 UNTIL his death in a police shoot-out last month he was South-East Asia's most wanted man; an Islamic militant responsible for countless atrocities and hundreds of deaths. But to residents of the grindingly poor township of Kepuhsari, Noordin Mohammed Top has become a saviour.
"Thanks to Noordin, I made two million rupiah in two days," said Adinda, after charging The Times $5 to park our car.
"That's more than I've ever made in my life."
Sitting in her front yard across the road, Yania, in her late twenties, was equally grateful to the dead militant. Charging $2.70 for a bottle of water, she said: "I've never been able to go to visit my family in Yogyakarta. But last weekend Noordin paid for me to fly there."
On September 17, residents of this community, close to a militant Islamist town 300 miles from Jakarta, were woken by gunfire as security forces stormed a nearby house. It was the home of Hadi Susilo, known to neighbours as a kindly religious teacher who taught their children the Koran.What they did not know was that Susilo was an Islamic militant, and a senior member of Noordin's al-Qaeda network.
Noordin - who is blamed for the 2002 Bali bombing that killed more than 200 people, and attacks on two Jakarta hotels in which seven more died in July this year - was hiding at Susilo's house. With them were two other members of the group who had evaded capture since the Jakarta bombings.
Efforts by security forces since July have led to the death or capture of many Noordin lieutenants. In August, police celebrated when they thought they had killed Noordin himself in a day-long gun battle - only to later find that DNA tests showed that the dead man was not the leader but one of his allies.
Noordin finally met his end in a shoot-out after scores of police and anti-terror officers flooded Kepuhsari, evacuating residents before the firing started.
A month on, the spot where he died has become a tourist magnet. The house remains cordoned off, but scores of people line the earth banks behind it to gaze silently at the spot of the militants' last stand.
Residents are making the most of the area's sudden notoriety. On the approach to Kepuhsari is a hand-painted cardboard sign. Above a blue arrow pointing to the right it reads: "Location of terrorist Top's death."
A little further on is another sign: "The closest sign to terrorist Top's place of death."
Driving into the village, cars are shepherded to the side of the road, with drivers charged to park on the mud track.
Every house has turned into a street stall, offering water, soft drinks and home-cooked snacks.
Outside one house, a menu of local delicacies is illustrated with photo-copied pictures of Noordin and his allies. More signs advertise a unique variation on the national rice dish - "nasi goreng Noordin" - while another offers "tumpeng terrorisi Top".
There had been fears that after the shoot-out Kepuhsari would become a place of pilgrimage, or even a jihadist recruiting ground.
The area is known as a militant centre: Solo, the nearest large town, is the home of Abu Bakar Bashir, spiritual head of Jemaah Islamiyah, a hardline group Noordin once worked with.
However, many people here appear tired of the militants. After the Bali bombers were executed in November, the funerals were marked by parades and demonstrations by their supporters. By contrast, the demonstrations held after Noordin's death were protests at plans for a local burial.
Thousands took to the streets after his death, waving placards demanding that the dead militants be buried elsewhere. "We are tired of the terrorists," said Chokol, a paramedic who had come to view Noordin's place of death. "It's good that he's dead. He was not a good Muslim." 
 By Adam Gartrell The video, recorded less than three weeks before the attacks that killed seven, including three Australians, was recovered from a laptop seized in the police raid that killed terrorist mastermind Noordin Mohammed Top earlier this month.
The video, believed to be shot by Noordin henchman Saifuddin Jaelani, shows suicide bombers Nana Ikhwan Maulana and Dani Dwi Permana picnicking in a park across the road from the the Ritz-Carlton.
"This is our target," Nana tells the camera.
"Destroy America, destroy Australia, destroy Indonesia," Jaelani says.
Dani, just 18 years old, says: "This is not suicide. This is what our enemies fear.
"It is an obligation for all. Those who do not execute this obligation are sinners."
Police believe Jaelani, who is still on the run, recruited Nana and Dani for the attacks.
There is speculation he may replace Noordin as head of Noordin's hardline Jemaah Islamiah splinter group.
Other videos taken from the laptop show the Nana and Dani exercising in the park and surveying their target.
Police also seized a letter, allegedly written by Jaelani to his family in July, in which he accuses America and Australia of "slaughtering our brothers".
Jaelani also claims in the letter that Noordin's group is extremely well organised.
"There are those who manage the funds, there are those who recruit, there are ulema who are giving fatwas (holy decree) and directions.
"There are those who guard the mujahid (holy warrior) families, there are those who source cars, source explosives, source weapons.
There are also political minds, filmmakers and couriers, he wrote.
"And there are those who become volunteers for matrydom."
Indonesian police detective Tito Karnavian said the laptop also contained evidence that Noordin's group had re-established links with Middle East terrorist groups like al-Qaeda.
It also revealed how Noordin's group wanted to target the Indonesian government because of its efforts to promote democracy, Karnavian said.
 Mark Dodd Top was one of four people who died during the raid yesterday on a militant hideout near Solo, Indonesia's police chief, Bambang Hendarso Danuri, confirmed last night. "He is Noordin M. Top," Mr Danuri said. On the run for more than a decade, Malaysian-born Top, 41, had managed to elude police by using a well-established network of sympathetic Islamist supporters and family connections. In a major embarrassment for Indonesian police last month, they claimed to have killed Top after an epic 17-hour siege only to discover he had escaped. The bomb-maker, who fled to Indonesia after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, is best known for plotting the 2002 Bali bombings, in which 202 people died, 88 of them Australians. He was also behind the 2005 Bali blasts that killed 20 people, including four Australians. But his hand was behind many other terrorist attacks. Indonesian police hold Top responsible for masterminding attacks on the JW Marriott Hotel in 2003 that left 12 killed and another suicide bombing one year later at the Australian embassy in Jakarta that killed 10 people and left dozens injured. He is also suspected of having had a role in the bombings at the Marriott and the Ritz-Carlton hotels in July, in which seven people died, including three Australians. Top's end finally came yesterday morning in a small suburban house in Kepuh Sari village on the outskirts of Solo in Central Java, a stronghold of the Jemaah Islamiah terror network. Bali bomb victim Peter Hughes, who suffered shocking burns during the 2002 Bali bombing, welcomed the news of Top's death. "If it's correct, then Indonesian authorities have done their job," Mr Hughes said. "The victims' families can feel a little bit relieved knowing that a main guy has been caught and that justice has probably finally been done." Police confirmed the identity of three others killed in the house, which was stormed early yesterday after a nine-hour siege. They were Susilo, who rented the house, a close associate of Top; Bagus Budi Pranoto, alias "Urwah"; and another bomb-maker named Maruto. Loud explosions and gunfire were heard during the police raid on the militants' hideout. "Despite repeated warnings to surrender, there was a firefight," Mr Danuri said. "A motorcycle was hit, caught fire and they took refuge by huddling in the bathroom. But our men breached the wall as morning prayers came; at around 5am or 6am, we carried out a quick operation in three hours and we managed to disable them." Jakarta-based intelligence sources said yesterday's raid was linked to an arrest on Wednesday of a close Top associate and another raid last month in West Java in which police killed two suspected militants and found up to 500kg of bombs in a house in Bekasi. Top led an offshoot of the Jemaah Islamiah terrorist group known as al-Qa'ida in the Malay Archipelago. Jakarta-based Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group said that although Top's death was a major blow, it was not a fatal knockout against his group. "It's significant because it means the most dangerous man in Southeast Asia has been taken out of commission, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the problem of terrorism is over and done with," she said. Indonesian expert and former senior Office of National Assessments Indonesian analyst Ken Ward agreed. "They've lost a central figure, a person of enormous importance, but let's not assume this is the end of Indonesian terrorism," he said. Source: The Australian
 September 17 Loud explosions and gunfire were heard coming from a house on the outskirts of the town of Solo, a known militant stronghold, as well as shouts of Allahu Akbar (God is Greater).
A police source had earlier said the target of the operation was an associate of Malaysian terrorism suspect Noordin Mohammed Top, the leader of an Al-Qaeda-linked group blamed for a string of deadly bombings in Indonesia.
The source said it was possible that Top was also inside the house.
"Five bodies have been taken out of the house,'' a police intelligence officer told AFP, requesting anonymity.
An AFP correspondent saw three bodies being brought out of the house after the raid ended just before dawn. Metro TV said five people had been killed in the clash, and one member of the anti-terrorism police injured.
Members of the Mobile Brigade, a special police squad, besieged the house in the early hours of the morning and shooting went on for several hours, witnesses said.
Asked about the raid, Saud Usman Nasution, head of the Special Detachment 88 anti-terror squad, said that his unit was "still monitoring'' the situation.
Noordin, 41, who heads a violent splinter faction of the radical Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) network, is suspected of being behind July 17 double suicide attacks on Jakarta's JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels.
The bombings, which killed seven people including six foreigners, were the first attack in Indonesia in nearly four years.
Noordin allegedly also masterminded a 2003 attack on the Marriott that killed 12 people, as well as the 2004 bombing of the Australian embassy and 2005 attacks on tourist restaurants on the holiday island of Bali.
Police believe they narrowly missed Noordin in a dramatic televised raid in August on a safehouse in Temanggung, Central Java.
Noordin was initially reported dead at the end of the 17-hour siege but the body later turned out to be that of a florist working in the Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotel complex who helped plot the attacks from the inside.
Jemaah Islamiyah's ultimate goal is to unite Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and the southern Philippines into a fundamentalist Islamic state.
 Stephen Fitzpatrick, Jakarta correspondent The new laws could see the targeting of Muslim clerics such as Abu Bakar Bashir, who gave his blessing to the 2002 Bali bombers but escaped attempts to convict him of terrorism. Bashir is regarded by a small group of hardline Islamists as a guiding light, although he almost certainly had no direct involvement in recent attacks including the July 17 Jakarta bombings. He spends his time travelling throughout Indonesia preaching his anti-Western message. He presided at the central Java funerals three weeks ago of two suspected terrorists shot dead by police in relation to the July 17 attacks, describing them as "fighters for Islam" who would be given "God's reward" in heaven. Thousands of people crowded into the ceremony in the city of Solo to hear Bashir's words. The head of Indonesia's anti-terrorism desk, Ansyaad Mbai, told The Australian yesterday that encouraging terrorist sentiment should be a prosecutable offence. "What I think we need, in the sense of increasing our legal capacity, is the criminalisation of certain activities, such as preparation for terrorist acts, encouraging people to be involved in terrorism, and spreading hatred," General Mbai said. Under current anti-terrorism laws enacted after the 2002 Bali blasts, suspects can be held for just seven days before police must either outline charges or release the accused. However, General Mbai denied the proposed new laws signalled a return to the repressive days of former dictator Suharto, or that they were an attempt to copy the heavy-handed internal security acts of neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore. The retired police inspector-general, who was part of a delegation summonsed to the parliament on Monday to address legislators on the need for the rule changes, said that despite recent advances in Indonesian policing standards, the July bombings were evidence that "our legal protection remains inadequate". "Terrorism needs to be prevented, and the preventative means we have are through the legal system," he said. General Mbai cited as proof of Indonesia's systemic inadequacy the fact that one of the men buried by Bashir two weeks ago, Air Setiawan, had previously been arrested on suspicion of involvement in terrorist activities and subsequently released. "That's a lesson that our laws are too soft," General Mbai said. Parliament has in the past considered and rejected proposals to institute a stand-alone internal security act like Malaysia's or Singapore's, but the current debate revolves around stiffening the already existing anti-terrorism legislation. The Brussels-based International Crisis Group, in a report last week on the support base of Noordin Mohammad Top, the Malaysian believed responsible for the July bombings, warned against a beefed-up legislative approach to the problem. "Strengthened legislation, harsher sentences for convicted terrorists, and new structural arrangements in the security apparatus (would be counter-productive) unless government agencies make a serious effort to understand and weaken the support base for terrorist activity," the group warned. Source: The Australian
 Analysts at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) said the group led by Malaysian Islamist Noordin Mohammed Top was finding it "disturbingly easy" to recruit members to carry out fresh attacks.
"More than a month after the 17 July, 2009, hotel bombings in Jakarta, Noordin Mohammed Top remains at large, but his network is proving to be larger and more sophisticated than previously thought," the ICG said.
"Noordin may still be the commander, but he has some exceedingly well-connected lieutenants who made their debut in the hotel bombings."
The twin suicide blasts at the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels killed nine people including two bombers and six foreigners. They marked the bloody end of a four-year hiatus in such attacks in the mainly Muslim country.
Noordin, 41, is the most wanted extremist in Indonesia and calls his group "al-Qaeda in the Malay Archipelago".
He allegedly received al-Qaeda backing for an attack on the Marriott in 2003 which killed 12 people, but no such link has been confirmed this time around.
Police say they have killed three cell members and hold five others in custody, including an Indonesian Islamist journalist known as the "Prince of Jihad" who is accused of helping arrange funds for the attacks.
Counter-terror squad officers arrested the journalist, Mohammad Jibril Abdurahman, near Jakarta late on Tuesday and also raided the office of his extremist website, Arrahmah.com.
Police believe the Pakistan-educated suspect was an accomplice of Saudi national Al Khalil Ali, who was arrested in Indonesia earlier this month on suspicion of smuggling money from abroad to pay for the July 17 operation.
The source of the funds is not known, but police have said they are investigating whether the money came from al-Qaeda brokers in the Middle East, among other possible donors.
ICG analyst Sidney Jones said Mohammad Jibril was not a known member of al-Qaeda but had reportedly had contacts with Osama bin Laden's group in the past. Source: The Australian
Militants behind the hotel bombings in Jakarta also planned to use snipers to attack Barack Obama’s convoy, according to an intelligence expert. A link between the suicide bombings at the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels on July 17, which killed nine people and wounded 53, and funding from a group linked to al-Qaeda is also being investigated, Dynno Chressbon, from the Centre for Intelligence and National Security, said. He said that two of the four wanted suspects, Ario Sudarso and Mohamad Syahrir, had been trained for an attack on Mr Obama, who is expected to visit Indonesia before the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in Singapore in November. “For Obama, they planned to attack the convoy around the airport using MK-IIIs,” he said, referring to a Russian-made sniper rifle that he said was used by the Taleban in Afghanistan and in Muslim conflict areas in the Philippines. An Indonesian police spokesman could not be reached for comment yesterday, but the sniper plot and a thwarted plot to attack Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the Indonesian President, indicate the scale of the ambitions of Indonesian militants may be higher than first thought. The alleged snipers were from a group called the Indonesian Islamic State, which has a training camp in the restive southern Philippines and received support from a group headed by the Malaysian-born militant Noordin Mohammad Top, Mr Chressbon said. Mr Top is believed to be the mastermind behind the hotel attacks, which killed nine people and wounded 53. Read more here ... Source: Times Online
From correspondents in Jakarta, Indonesia | August 19A MAN believed to be from Saudi Arabia has been arrested on suspicion of smuggling money used to finance last month's deadly Jakarta hotel attacks, Indonesian police said today.Police spokesman Nanan Soekarna said the man, identified only as Ali, had been arrested recently as part of the investigation into who funded the July 17 attacks on the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels that killed nine people. Another man identified only as Iwan also had been detained for questioning over his suspected links to the network of Malaysian Islamist extremist Noordin Mohammed Top, the alleged mastermind of the attack. "Ali and Iwan are still being questioned by our team to prove their links with another country and with the financing,'' Mr Soekarna said. "Ali is believed to be a Saudi Arabian national.'' Analysts have said that if the funding for the attacks came from abroad, a likely source would be al-Qaeda. But police have not confirmed any connection between the hotel blasts and Saudi-born Osama bin Laden's organisation. Al-Qaeda has allegedly financed previous suicide attacks in Indonesia including the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, and Noordin's first major operation, a 2003 truck bombing of the Jakarta Marriott that killed 12. Noordin, 41, leads a splinter group of the Jemaah Islamiyah terror network, which aims to create a regional Islamic caliphate. He is Indonesia's most-wanted man and is blamed for a series of attacks against Westerners in the mainly Muslim country that have killed around 50 people and wounded hundreds. DNA tests showed that a suspect killed in an August 8 raid on a militant hideout was not Noordin as initially reported, police said last week. Source: The Australian
August 08 BREAKING NEWS: ASIA'S most wanted terrorist Noordin Mohammed Top has been arrested, according to reports. Indonesian police have not confirmed the arrest, but they have reported an armed standoff with gunmen in a suspected hideout of Top, the alleged mastermind of terror attacks that resulted in about 100 Australian deaths. Shooting erupted after crack counter-terrorism police surrounded a house in rural Central Java as part of investigations into last month's twin suicide bombings on hotels in the capital Jakarta, he said. ``There was shooting between the special detachment team and the people inside the house,'' spokesman Nanan Soekarna said. ``This house was our target,." The news network Al Jazeera, meanwhile, reported on its website that Top had been arrested and taken into custody. ``Officially the police are still denying that they have captured Noordin Top in central Java, but a very reliable source on the ground have told us they captured a man very likely to be Noordin Top,'' Step Vaessen, Al Jazeera's correspondent, reported. The house siege began around 7pm last night in Beji village, Temanggung regency and sporadic shooting could still be heard after midnight into the early hours this morning. Read More here,,, Source: Herald Sun
The posting claims the attacks, in which two suicide bombers killed seven people at the J.W. Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels, were specifically directed at US business interests and at the Manchester United football team, which was to have played an exhibition match in Jakarta. It promises to release video footage of the bombers' statements. The posting's origin has not been verified, but police say they are investigating. Identifying itself for the first time as "al-Qa'ida Indonesia", under the auspices of Top, the group claims to have engaged in extensive research before the blasts to identify its targets. Top has previously called his group, which is an offshoot of the radical Jemaah Islamiah movement founded by preacher Abu Bakar Bashir and the late Abdullah Sungkar, "al-Qa'ida for the Malay archipelago". Read More,,,, Source: The Australian
 Soldiers threw a cordon around Jakarta's Ritz-Carlton hotel,
one of two hotels struck by suicide bombers.Tom Allard and Lindsay Murdoch, Jakarta July 19, 2009 SOUTH-EAST Asia's most wanted man, militant Islamist Noordin Mohammed Top, is behind the twin bombings of the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta, according to Indonesian officials, who have launched a manhunt for the terrorist wanted over a string of attacks since he plotted the first Bali bombings. As the investigation intensified yesterday, the families of two Australians killed in Friday's blasts — Nathan Verity and Craig Senger — grieved, with Mr Verity's wife Vanessa and father arriving in Jakarta to identify his body and bring it home. A third Australian, Garth McEvoy, has been identified as being at the epicentre of the blast in the Marriott. Australian authorities are yet to officially confirm his death, but Indonesia's Health Ministry has listed him among the fatalities. Police are trying to identify some of the victims from the attack, which killed nine, including at least four foreigners. All three Australians had been attending a business breakfast at the Marriott hotel in a private room adjacent to where the bomb went off. Mr Verity ran a recruitment firm, Mr McEvoy was a lawyer for the construction services company Thiess, while Mr Senger was a senior trade official working at the Australian embassy. A source within CastleAsia, a Jakarta-based consultancy that organised the breakfast, said it was likely terrorists had targeted the high-profile gathering to send a message to the foreign business community. The senior anti-terrorism official at Indonesia's ministry for political, legal and security affairs, Ansyaad Mbai, said it was clear from the way the attacks were carried out that Top was involved. An undetonated bomb and examination of the bomb site have confirmed that the explosives were similar to those previously used by Top. Mr Mbai noted that the attackers had changed their tactics to circumvent security arrangements outside the hotels. "Before, the suicide bombers attacked from outside … (now) they have penetrated this increased security system and reached the heart of the target," he said. The undetonated bomb discovered in room 1808 of the Marriott hotel had been installed inside a hollowed-out laptop computer. Indonesia's Detik news yesterday reported that the man who brought the explosives into the hotel had set off the building's metal detectors but was waved through after assuring security personnel that it was his computer that had triggered the alarm. Meanwhile, Jakarta's residents remained defiant in the aftermath of the attacks. Outside the Ritz-Carlton hotel a sign reading "We are not afraid, they only make us stronger" was surrounded by flowers and wreaths. Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith arrived in Jakarta yesterday with a team of security officials, saying Australia would provide "any assistance" required. Australian Federal Police are helping Indonesian officers with crime scene and ballistic analysis, and guidance on intelligence matters. Source: The Age
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