Stephen Fitzpatrick, Jakarta – Indonesian police were so close to catching fugitive Malaysian terrorist Noordin Mohammad Top that they even managed to photograph him outside a Jakarta safe house last Thursday.
But after a tension-filled weekend, including live-television coverage of a country farmhouse being blown up by police bomb squad and snipers, the discovery of hundreds of kilograms of explosives stashed in Jakarta and a truck bomb ready to go off in an apparent plot to assassinate President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, three alleged terrorists killed and several more arrested, there is just one thing missing.
That, it seems, is Top himself.
Only DNA testing will prove whether a man with half his head blown off after a 17-hour siege in remote Central Java ended with elite police storming his hideout is Top. However, indications are firming that it was someone else.
If that is so, it will be just the latest narrow escape for the region's most wanted, and most elusive, terrorist.
It was the arrest last Wednesday of one of Top's trusted lieutenants that gave police their first big break in the investigation into the July 17 Jakarta hotel bombings, which Top is believed to have planned.
Nine people died in those attacks on the J.W. Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels, including two suicide bombers, coincidentally named at the weekend as 18-year-old Dani Dwi Permana and an older man of unspecified age, Nana Ikhwan Maulana. Dozens more were seriously injured.
According to national police chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri, the arrested man, Amir Abdillah, revealed to investigators a plot to assassinate Dr Yudhoyono, possibly as soon as next week.
Mr Abdillah also told police of a safe house in Bekasi, a satellite city southeast of the capital very close to the President's private residence, and of another hideout near the town of Temanggung, Central Java. Simultaneous raids were launched on the two locations late on Friday, although it was the Temanggung house where Top was initially thought to have been hiding out.
Exchanges of gunfire there echoed through the night, shattering the rural idyll, after police confirmed with two young men they arrested in a nearby market that a character inside bore a resemblance to Top.
The siege reached its bloody conclusion about 10am on Saturday, when snipers in hills above the cottage took a break from peppering it with automatic rifle fire and bomb squad police inserted an explosive device, using a long bamboo pole to place it as far into the building as possible, protecting themselves as they did so with large anti-blast shields.
Then they turned and fled for their lives, detonating the bomb a few seconds later. Tiles flew off the roof of the small house, which sits in the middle of picturesque rice, corn and tobacco fields. Those windows not already broken in the previous onslaught shattered outwards.
The body of the dead man, who was found in the bathroom with the back of his head blown off, was flown to Jakarta for DNA testing. A lawyer for the woman thought to have married Top several years ago in the southern Central Java city of Cilacap, Arina Rahmah, said last night she had not yet been asked to identify it.
In Jakarta, meanwhile, a raid on the safe house in Bekasi had produced two more dead bodies and a cache of explosives and other bomb-making materials. One of the dead men, Air Setiawan, had previously been questioned in connection with the 2003 J.W. Marriott hotel bombing but released without charge.
That blast was Top's first major attack on a Western target, which he followed up with attacks on the Australian embassy in 2004, the second Bali bombing in 2005 and, it is believed, the latest atrocity.
Setiawan and his companion, Eko Joko Sarjono, were apparently killed by police as they tried to set off grenades.
According to police chief General Danuri, the house had been used as a meeting place for Top and his acolytes sometime after the July bombings, possibly as recently as a week ago.
A Mitsubishi truck, intended to be used in a suicide bombing attack as soon as next week, had been driven to Jakarta from the Central Java city of Solo and had already been fitted with a bomb.
General Danuri claimed the arrested man, Abdillah, had also told investigators about an April 30 meeting in the West Java town of Kuningan where Top outlined his plans for follow-up attacks to the July bombing.
These included, General Danuri said, assaults on Dr Yudhoyono's home and at the state palace in central Jakarta.
Analysts agreed yesterday that, if true, this would mark a significant shift in the terrorists' strategy. "Is it true that the Noordin M. Top group would carry out political assassinations, or is this just because the President himself has previously mentioned himself as being a target?" asked academic Anak Agung Banyu Perwita, a security issues expert.
Dr Yudhoyono attracted criticism for holding a press conference the afternoon of the Jakarta bombs linking them to domestic political opponents.
Top's target has always been, essentially, Western democracy and capitalism, dressed up in religious clothing. The idea of him singling out Dr Yudhoyono, whose personal military security detail is the most efficient and disciplined in Indonesia, seems unlikely but it is always possible that, for Top, it is now payback time for the executions almost one year ago of the three Bali bombers.
Top idolised Mukhlas, alias Ali Ghufron, who was executed by firing squad along with his brother Amrozi and third bomber Imam Samudra on the Nusakambangan prison island off southern Java.
If he has escaped this latest police dragnet and a new bombing campaign is planned, it could easily be linked to his love for the young preacher.
It is no coincidence that the city where Top has most recently been hiding – and where he took Arinah Rahmah as his third wife, had two children with her and sought protection – is Cilacap, just across the water from Nusakambangan island. Police will now be investigating the likelihood that Top visited the trio in jail.
Kevin Rudd phoned Dr Yudhoyono yesterday for a personal explanation of how Indonesian police came so close to capturing Top and yet still appear to have missed their target. According to an aide, Dr Yudhoyono briefed the Prime Minister on the latest intelligence.