Indonesia’s most wanted Islamist militant, accused in a string of deadly terror attacks including a bombing in Bali, was not killed in a shootout last week as initial media reports suggested and remains at large, police confirmed yesterday.
Tests comparing the body’s DNA with that of members of Noordin Muhammad Top’s family came back negative, said Eddy Saparwoko, head of the national police victim identification unit.
The body was found to be that of a florist linked to Noordin, who police said was a member of a terrorist cell that led last month’s twin suicide hotel bombings in Jakarta, he said.
Noordin, a Malaysian national, has been blamed for masterminding a series of deadly al-Qaeda-funded attacks in Indonesia since 2003 and is a prime suspect in the July 17 hotel attacks that killed seven people.
Last month’s strikes ended a four-year lull in terrorist attacks in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation.
Bombings have killed more than 250 people in Indonesia since 2002, most of them on the resort island of Bali, where a 2002 attack killed 202 people.
“The DNA test didn’t match with Noordin’s family,” Saparwoko said at a nationally televised press conference Wednesday.
Local media had reported that Noordin, a self-proclaimed al-Qaeda commander who has eluded capture in Indonesia and Malaysia since 2001, was slain in a gunbattle with security forces.
But Saparwoko said the man who died in the shootout at a farmhouse in central Java on Saturday was a florist, identified only as Ibrohim. He made floral arrangements at the JW Marriott Hotel and Ritz-Carlton hotels, where suicide bombers attacked last month during breakfast, killing themselves and wounding more than 50 others.
Chief national police spokesman Nanan Sukarna identified Ibrohim as “a planner and arranger of the bombings” and said that five other suspects in the blasts remain at large, including Noordin.
Ibrohim, the father of four children, began working in Jakarta’s luxury hotels in 2002 after gaining “an important position in the Noordin M. Top’s network,” Nanan said.
He began working in 2005 for Cynthia Florist, which operated two shops at the US hotel chains.
Police say Ibrohim met Noordin several times in the run-up to the July attacks and had advanced preparations to kill Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, including a would-be suicide bomber and a car rigged with hundreds of kilograms of explosives.
In April, Ibrohim began scouting the targets and smuggled explosives in through a basement cargo dock a day before the strikes, Nanan said, showing newly released security camera footage.
The grainy images show a lone man driving a small pickup truck into the JW Marriott Hotel and unloading what police said were three containers of explosives, apparently after skirting all security checks.
The video also showed Ibrohim leading the suicide bombers, one of them an 18-year-old high school graduate, through the hotels on July 8, apparently in a rehearsal for the attacks plotted from two rented safe houses on the outskirts of Jakarta.
“We know him. He worked as a third-party florist,” said Allan Orlob, head of security for the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels.
Ibrohim resigned the morning of the bombings, Orlob said yesterday, and left only a letter to his employer in which he asked that part of his last paycheck be used to reimburse several people who loaned him money.
Noordin, 41, is also accused of orchestrating a bombing of the JW Marriott Hotel in 2003 and a massive explosion outside the Australian embassy in 2004, attacks in the capital that killed more than 20 people.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of