Tom Allard, Jakarta – The arrest of a key figure in the Indonesian terrorist network just weeks before the deadly Jakarta hotel bombings is believed to have prompted the terrorists to bring forward the attack.
Indonesian authorities arrested the right-hand man of Noordin Top, the suspected mastermind of the bombings, just weeks before the blasts.
The capture of Saifuddin Zuhri, more commonly known as Sabit, showed how close counter-terrorism police came to cracking Noordin's network before the blasts that killed nine people, but also may have hastened the attacks.
Sabit, a veteran of Osama bin Laden's Afghan jihad and Noordin's most trusted emissary, was apprehended in a raid in late June in Cilacap, Central Java.
Apparently acting on information gained from his interrogation, police launched a second raid on Tuesday last week that uncovered a bomb "identical" to the one used in Friday's blasts.
The day after the bomb was found buried in a Cilacap home, the suicide bombers checked into the Marriott hotel. A day later, after putting a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door for 24 hours while the bombs were assembled, they launched the attack.
"If [Sabit] was as trusted by Noordin as seemed to be the case, the chance was that he would have known something was on," said ANU terrorism analyst Greg Fealy.
The operation at the Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels was clearly planned for months, if not longer. But there is other evidence that suggests not everything went to plan, and the attack could have been brought forward. A third bomb assembled in a laptop, for example, was inexplicably left behind despite being "active".
Sabit was Noordin's point man for his last known attempt to launch a terrorist attack, a plot last year to blow up a cafe in Bukitinggi, West Sumatra. The plot was averted only after the bomber saw a Muslim family walk in and decided not to detonate the bomb.
Sabit – acting as Noordin's emissary – identified the target, provided the terrorist cell with a bomb-making instructor and materials, as well as a gun and ammunition, according to a report in May by Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group.
Sabit is either a close friend or nephew – reports differ – of Baharudin, Noordin's father-in-law and the owner of the house where the bomb was discovered last week. Baharudin is also the imam of a radical mosque in Cilacap but escaped the recent raids and remains at large.
Several members of the so-called "Palembang" cell planning the Bukitinggi bombing hailed from Cilacap, a port town just 500 metres from Nusakambangan, the prison island where Bali bombers Amrozi, Mukhlas and Imam Samudra were imprisoned and later executed.
Noordin's network runs on a strict cell structure where communications between members are kept to a minimum, particularly when an attack is looming. Sabit was, by most accounts, intensely loyal to his master. But his arrest and the subsequent raid would have been alarming to Noordin, giving the impression his lieutenant may have squealed.
"[The arrest] would have made them move faster because it might lead to this particular cell being uncovered," said terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna, from Singapore's Nanyang University.