As the hunt continues for those responsible for the weekend attacks, security officials say there is no doubt the bombings point to the handiwork of two men. Azahari bin Husin and Noordin Mohammed Top are the alleged masterminds behind the terror group Jemaah Islamiah and police say their fingerprints are all over this latest attack. Linda Lopresti reports.
Lopresti: Every time there's a major bombing in Southeast Asia, investigators whisper the names of two Malaysian men – Azahari bin Husin and Noordin Mohammed Top. They are believed to be the masterminds behind some of Indonesia's worst attacks – including Bali in 2002 and last year's Australian embassy bombing in Jakarta. And now again, they are the top suspects in the weekend's deadly Bali blasts. Both men are believed to be key figures in the militant Islamic group Jemahh Islamiah. This is Abdullah Razak Baginda – one of Malaysia's top security analysts.
Baginda: I would describe them as highly motivated individuals who have a high sense of duty, a skewed sense of duty, but essentially they're very intelligent, they're very cunning and obviously they're very, very dedicated to the cause.
Lopresti: Dr Azahari is known as the Demolition man – that's because he's considered the top explosives expert for JI. The be-spectacled doctor is a British-trained geophysics professor, who went to seconday school in the South Australian capital Adelaide, he was also a lecturer at Malaysia's University of Technology when in 2001- he dropped out of sight.
Baginda: I would divide his life into several phases, the first being when he was an ordinary person, an academic who went to do higher degrees in the UK, and then I think at some point, probably in the late 90s he must have been drawn into an influence by I would imagine some scholars, that would be enough to convince him that he should dedicate the rest of his life to a cause.
Lopresti: Noordin Top is known as the bag man, the money man and JI's alleged top recruiter.
Security experts believe that Azahari and Noordin fled to Indonesia after the September 11 attacks, to avoid Malaysia's crackdown on Islamic militants. Sidney Jones, the pre-eminent expert on terrorism in Southeast Asia, says it's likely the two men bonded way before 9-11.
Jones: These are people who both came into the radical movement fairly late in life, Noordin became a part of Hambali's circle in Johore Malaysia directly after he graduated from university, and eventually took over as head of the religious school that became JI's headquarters in Malaysia, he took over from Muklas, one of the Bali bombers. It's probably at the school, at Lukmanul Hakiem pesantren where they bonded into a team.
Lopresti: In the past few years, Indonesian police have arrested scores of JI's most militant members and Sidney Jones says the arrests have severely weakened the group. But she says it's believed a breakaway faction remains committed to terrorist acts against the West.
Jones: We think that the two of them now are part of either a hardline faction of JI or something that's merging into another group entirely. We don't know how many people are involved in this militant wing, we don't know who is necessarily the leader, although they're grouped around these two. But there may be other people involved as well.
Lopresti: Azahari Husin and Noordin Top are currently being hunted across South East Asia by American trained anti-terrorist squads. Yet they continue to evade capture. Malaysian security analayst Abdullah Razak Baginda says while the two men have become the masters of escape, there is no doubt they are being protected by sympathisers.
Baginda: You wouldn't be able to escape the full brunt of the law on many boundaries if you don't have the support, and I would imagine even the support of some members of authority, so people who are sympathetic to their cause will do whatever it takes in order to protect them.
Jones: I think they're going to get caught and I think again the possibility that if indeed they were involved in this last bombing in Bali and if the bombers themselves are quickly identified and I think that's going to happen, it may mean that finally these two are going to be tracked down and caught and prosecuted. That's what we all devoutly hope, but I think it's actually a real possibility.