JAKARTA -- Indonesian anti-terror forces killed two brothers wanted over the July 17 hotel bombings during a raid Friday on a militant hideout in the city, a police source said. Asked to confirm local media reports that Syaifudin Zuhri bin Jaelani and Mohammed Syahrir were the two men killed in the raid, the source from the elite counter-terror squad said only: "Yes"."I can say no more."
A police spokesman told a press conference later Friday that the brothers were the targets of the raid and confirmed that two men had been killed. But he refused to identify the dead men, saying the results of forensic examinations on the bodies would be announced on Monday.
Jaelani is a Yemen-educated Islamic extremist and "healer" who is accused of recruiting the two suicide bombers who detonated themselves at the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta in July, killing seven people. His brother, Mohammed Syahrir, once worked as a technician for national airline Garuda Indonesia and is known to police from their investigations into the 2004 truck bombing of the Australian embassy, according to analysts.
The brothers were accomplices of slain Malaysian terror leader Noordin Mohammed Top, the alleged mastermind of the hotel attacks who was killed by police in Central Java on September 17.
Rolling up his network. Sweet
Gunfire and an explosion were heard as police raided the house in Ciputat on the capital's southern outskirts, witnesses said. Police spokesman Nanan Soekarna said the suspects threw "firebombs" at the raiding party before they were killed.
"You'll never take us alive, coppers!"
"Hokay."
Ikbal Tanjung, who rented another room in the two-storey house, said three people had recently moved into the room targeted by police. They kept to themselves and did not mix with their neighbours, who were mostly university students, he added.
According to the International Crisis Group (ICG) think-tank, the brothers were "pivotal" members of the terror cell that carried out the hotel attacks. Two of their sisters were married to other key figures in the cell, the ICG said in an August report.
That fits the standard islamic terror cell profile.
Jaelani "almost certainly had direct contact with Al-Qaeda" but was not known to police before the hotel attacks, the report said.
Noordin led a splinter faction of the Jemaah Islamiyah regional terror group, which he once dubbed "Al-Qaeda in the Malay Archipelago". In addition to the July hotel blasts, he was blamed for a 2003 attack on the Marriott, the 2004 bombing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta and 2005 attacks on tourist restaurants on Bali, killing almost 50 people in total.
Another of his disciples who is believed to have helped him hide from police handed himself in to authorities a week ago.
A week in the tender custody of the Indo cops, possibly he gave up the brothers
Bet it only took a day, the remaining six were on the house ...
Noordin and his followers dreamt of creating an Islamic caliphate spanning much of Southeast Asia and advocated the use of indiscriminate violence to protect Muslims from perceived oppression around the world. He was inspired by Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's call for global jihad against the West and allegedly received funding from Al-Qaeda for the first Marriott bombing.