By TOM WRIGHT
JAKARTA -- Indonesian police said Wednesday that the man they shot dead during a 16-hour gun battle this past weekend wasn't Noordin Mohamed Top, one of Asia's most-wanted terrorists.
The finding means Mr. Noordin has yet again eluded Indonesian authorities, who have made significant strides in recent years toward dismantling militant Islamist groups but have yet to capture or kill their top target. Experts said the finding could further burnish his reputation among militants.
Mr. Noordin, a Malaysian citizen, is wanted for allegedly orchestrating a string of terrorist attacks in Indonesia, including the July 17 attacks on the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta that killed seven people and two suicide bombers.
Police thought they had Mr. Noordin cornered in a rural farmhouse near Temanggung, a town in Central Java, a province on Indonesia's main island, when the siege involving hundreds of heavily armed officers began on Friday. A senior antiterrorism official said on Saturday that they had killed a man believed to be Mr. Noordin.
But the DNA tests revealed that the man killed was in fact called Ibrohim, a florist who worked at the JW Marriott and helped carry out the attacks, said Nanan Sukarna, a spokesman for the national police.
In a news conference Wednesday, police outlined how Mr. Ibrohim helped the two suicide bombers smuggle explosives into the hotel through the service entrance, skirting tight security at the main entrances.
Mr. Noordin has escaped police dragnets a number of times since 2003 after an earlier attack on the JW Marriott, his first major bombing. He has employed a series of disguises to avoid detection and has received shelter from radical Islamists in central Java and elsewhere in Indonesia.
"It's like Osama bin Laden escaping every time. It builds the legend about Noordin M. Top," said Sidney Jones, an expert on Indonesian radical Islamic groups at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, a conflict-resolution body.
Although his network probably numbers only 30 people, experts say he remains a threat while on the run. Despite intense police pressure, which has led to the arrest of hundreds of terrorists in recent years, Mr. Noordin has been able to mount attacks like last month's hotel bombings with only a handful of supporters.
Still, the police have made progress in recent weeks toward dismantling the network. Apart from killing Mr. Ibrohim, police arrested two other people Friday in Temanggung who are believed to be Mr. Noordin's bodyguards.
In a separate raid over the weekend near Jakarta, police killed two alleged terrorists and arrested three others from Mr. Noordin's network. They uncovered 1,000 pounds of explosives in a safe house which the militants were using and a vehicle fitted to carry them.
Police said at the weekend that the likely target of the car bomb was the private residence of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, which is located about three miles from the safe house outside Jakarta.
Doubts began to emerge late Saturday about the identity of the dead man. People who saw photos of the militant said it didn't resemble Mr. Noordin. Police refused to identify the body until a full autopsy and DNA tests were complete.
Write to Tom Wright at tom.wright@wsj.com
