CIA Makes Major Al Qaeda Arrest
Aug. 15 -- The CIA has captured a major al Qaeda leader who is believed to have planned bombings in Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia.
A top al Qaeda member and a leader of Southeast Asian militant group Jemaah Islamiyah, Riduan Isamuddin — also known as Hambali — was arrested as part of a CIA undercover operation, U.S. officials announced Thursday.
The operation was in cooperation with an undisclosed Southeast Asian country that wants its participation kept secret, officials told ABCNEWS.
The Associated Press and Reuters quoted senior Thai government sources as saying that Hambali and his wife were arrested in Thailand and extradited to Indonesia, where Hambali faces terrorism charges. Indonesian officials reportedly denied that Hambali was in the country.
The CIA called the arrest the "most significant capture since that of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed," who was nabbed in March and is believed to have been the military commander al Qaeda's global terror network and to have masterminded the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
In the past, the CIA has called the Indonesia-born Hambali the "Osama bin Laden of Southeast Asia."
Prisoners in custody have told the CIA that Hambali recently received a large sum of money from al Qaeda to carry out attacks against U.S. targets in the region. "He will certainly know about what is in the pipeline," an official told ABCNEWS.
President Bush spoke of Hambali's capture Thursday in San Diego when he spoke to U.S. troops, many of them just returning from Iraq. "He is no longer a problem to those who love freedom," Bush said. "We're making progress slowly but surely."
A Pentagon official said Hambali is "unquestionably the A No. 1, senior terrorist in Southeast Asia."
The official said Hambali, 37, was "clearly implicated" in plotting the Bali disco bombings of Oct. 12, 2002, which killed more than 200 people, and the Aug. 5 attack on the Marriott hotel in Jakarta, in which 11 people died.
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