http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20051003-030443-5718r
Raymond Bonner
"The two men, Azhari Husin, 48, who was educated in Australia and England, and Mohammad Noordin Top, in his mid-30s with a reputation for being an effective recruiter and fundraiser, were once part of Al Qaeda's operational network in Southeast Asia. But with that network largely destroyed, they are now believed to be operating on their own, terrorism experts say.
They have demonstrated a staggering ability to avoid capture and an extreme audaciousness, publicly sketching terrorist targets preceding an attack, and being on site when the bomb went off.
'They are definitely at the top of our list of people we are looking for,' Dino Djlal, a senior aide to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia, said in a brief telephone interview Monday evening.
'We believe they are the masterminds of the previous bombings,' he said, referring to the nightclub bombings here in October 2002, the suicide bombing of the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in August 2003 and of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta in September 2004.
The emergence of these two men as prime suspects, and the nature of the latest bombings here, is evidence of a new face of terrorism in Southeast Asia, terrorism experts say. The fixation until now has been on organizations like Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah, which have carried out spectacular attacks with large-scale bombs usually borne in vehicles.
Now, with both of those organizations severely weakened, the concern is shifting to individuals, like Husin and Top, who have their own loose informal structures.
During raids last summer, Indonesian authorities discovered, and interrupted, two groups that were planning attacks in Jakarta. The two groups had no knowledge of"
