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Al-Qeada's chief SE Asia strategist taken in Thailand

Hambali, al-Qaeda's top man in Southeast Asia and suspected mastermind behind a string of deadly bombings, has been captured in Thailand, handed over to the Americans and flown out of the country, officials said yesterday.

Asia's most wanted man, now clean-shaven and his face altered by plastic surgery, was arrested with a woman by Thai and US officials in Ayutthaya, the ancient Thai capital 80km north of Bangkok, a senior Thai general said.

"A special flight from the United States picked him up at Bangkok airport on Wednesday morning," said the general, who declined to be identified.

Confusion surrounded the whereabouts of the latest senior al-Qaeda-linked radical to be hunted down in the war on terror that Washington launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

Hambali, born Riduan Isamuddin, and his wife were flown home to Indonesia, a Thai government minister said. Indonesia's police chief said he was unaware of the transfer and a US official in Bangkok said Washington was unlikely to reveal his location soon.

Others have been held by US authorities at undisclosed locations, but are believed to have been questioned initially at bases in Afghanistan.

US President George W. Bush hailed the capture. "He's a known killer. Hambali was one of the world's most lethal terrorists. He is no longer a problem," he said.

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said Hambali's arrest followed local leads, but would not say where he had been taken.

"We received tipoffs from local people that there were strange-looking people staying around there so we checked their background and passports and realized that they were the people we were looking for," he told reporters in Sri Lanka.

The Muslim cleric, son of peasant farmers on the main Indonesian island of Java, crossed into Thailand last week from Laos using a fake Spanish passport, a police general said.

"He was not wearing a beard and he had had plastic surgery," he said. "He used a Spanish passport with a long, confusing Spanish name."

Hambali is wanted in Indonesia as the suspected brains behind many attacks across the archipelago, including last October's Bali bombings, which killed 202 people in two nightclubs.

US officials said Hambali, thought to be operations chief of Southeast Asia's militant Jemaah Islamiah network and the only man from the region to sit on al-Qaeda's military committee, was being interrogated but would not say where.

"Hambali is in US custody and that's all we can say for now," said a US diplomat in Bangkok.

Governments across Asia and in Australia breathed sighs of relief at the capture of a man tagged one of the world's most dangerous. He had been on the run since at least 2000. His fugitive status did not halt his activities, and he was videotaped attending January 2000 planning meetings in Malaysia for the the Sept. 11 strikes.
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