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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kevin Rose who wrote (443742)	8/15/2003 8:41:17 PM
From: Vitas	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

REALLY? explain this: Hambali Handed Over to U.S. After Thai Arrest Fri Aug 15,11:24 AM ET Add Top Stories - Reuters to My Yahoo! By Nopporn Wong-Anan and Darren Schuettler BANGKOK, Thailand (Reuters) - Hambali, al Qaeda's top man in Southeast Asia and the suspected mastermind behind a string of deadly bombings including the Bali attacks, has been captured in Thailand, handed over to U.S. authorities and flown out of the country, officials said Friday. Asia's most wanted man, now clean-shaven and his face altered by plastic surgery, was arrested with a woman by Thai and U.S. officials in Ayutthaya, the ancient Thai capital 50 miles north of Bangkok, a senior Thai general said. "A special flight from the United States picked him up at Bangkok airport Wednesday morning," said the general, who declined to be identified. "He's a known killer. Hambali was one of the world's most lethal terrorists. He is no longer a problem," he said. Confusion surrounded the whereabouts of the latest senior al Qaeda-linked radical to be hunted down in the war on terror that Washington launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. Hambali, born Riduan Isamuddin, and his wife were flown home to Indonesia, a Thai government minister said. Indonesia's police chief said he was unaware of the transfer and a U.S. official in Bangkok said Washington was unlikely to reveal his location soon. Hambali is wanted in Indonesia as the suspected planner of many attacks across the archipelago, including last October's Bali bombings, which killed 202 people in two nightclubs. Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said Hambali's arrest followed local leads, but would not say where he had been taken. "We received tip-offs from local people that there were strange-looking people staying around there so we checked their background and passports and realized that they were the people we were looking for," he told reporters in Sri Lanka. The Muslim cleric, son of peasant farmers on the main Indonesian island of Java, crossed into Thailand last week from Laos using a fake Spanish passport, a police general said. "He was not wearing a beard and he had had plastic surgery," he said. "He used a Spanish passport with a long, confusing Spanish name." U.S. officials said Hambali, thought to be operations chief of Southeast Asia's militant Jemaah Islamiah network and the only man from the region to sit on al Qaeda's military committee, was being interrogated but would not say where. "Hambali is in U.S. custody and that's all we can say for now," said a U.S. diplomat in Bangkok. Governments across Asia and in Australia breathed sighs of relief at the capture of a man tagged one of the world's most dangerous. He had been on the run since at least 2000. His fugitive status did not halt his activities, and he was videotaped attending January 2000 planning meetings in Malaysia for the Sept. 11 strikes. However, officials said they feared JI might strike again -- little more than a week after a suicide car bomber killed 12 people at a luxury Jakarta hotel -- in revenge for Hambali's capture. "We should not let our guard down," Philippine National Security Adviser Roilo Golez told Reuters. "We have to raise the alert level against repercussions or retaliatory attacks." SECURITY TIGHTENED Police tightened security around a meeting of Asia-Pacific officials in southern Thailand that is preparing for a regional summit in October that Bush is due to attend. Australian Prime Minister John Howard said no leader would be deterred from attending the summit in Bangkok. "Any gathering of world leaders carries a security challenge in the era in which we live in, but we're all still going and I can't imagine there'll be any change on that," he said. Australia said the arrest of Hambali, who is about 40, was a major breakthrough in the U.S.-led war on terror. Indonesia called it "an important mark in the global fight against terror." Predominantly Buddhist Thailand has 63 million people, 6 million of them Muslims, mostly living in the southern region bordering Malaysia. Hambali was first hunted in Thailand last year and is believed to have given the go-ahead for the Bali bombings at a meeting in Bangkok when he shifted JI's focus to soft targets. He was also sighted in neighboring Cambodia, but had managed to stay one step ahead of the law. Singapore said Hambali's arrest was significant but did not alter the risk of terror attacks on the city state, which is already very high. "It is highly significant (the arrest) as it removes one of the key leaders of the terrorist network. But the threat of terrorism is not over yet, as there are other Jemaah Islamiyah operatives still on the run or who have not surfaced," said Wong Kan Seng, Minister of Home Affairs. (Additional reporting by Telly Nathalia and Karima Anjani in Jakarta, Belinda Goldsmith in Canberra, Barani Krishnan in Kuala Lumpur)