By TOM WRIGHT
JAKARTA -- Police are investigating whether a man they killed over the weekend is one of Southeast Asia's most-wanted terrorists, following a pair of dramatic raids that may have foiled a plot to kill Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
Indonesian police killed three suspected terrorists -- including one who a senior antiterrorism official said was Noordin Mohamed Top, the main suspect behind last month's deadly suicide bombings at the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta -- and uncovered a large bomb cache for future attacks. Police said they believe the deaths and five arrests unraveled a plan to blow up the private residence of Mr. Yudhoyono, who has made fighting terrorism a hallmark of his administration since coming to power in 2004.Some experts on Sunday questioned whether police had killed Mr. Noordin, the self-proclaimed representative of al Qaeda in Southeast Asia.
Residents of Beji village in Java look at a bullet-riddled farmhouse on Sunday, a day after police ended a 17-hour siege on the suspected terrorist hideout.
The uncertainty surrounding the fate of Mr. Noordin, who has eluded capture several times, underscores how difficult it has been to stamp out terrorism in the world's largest Muslim-majority country, despite significant strides earlier in the decade.
Police Chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri declined to confirm Mr. Noordin's death Saturday afternoon, saying police would wait for DNA tests on the body, which should take about a week. Later, pictures began to circulate of the man shot dead in the bathroom of a farmhouse near Temanggung, a town in central Java, a province on Indonesia's main island where Mr. Noordin is believed to have spent most of the past six years on the run. Those pictures didn't look like Mr. Noordin, according to people who have seen them.
Sidney Jones, an expert on Indonesian terrorism with the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based conflict-resolution body, said police were sure Mr. Noordin was in the farmhouse based on information from two people arrested on Friday in Temanggung, and had confirmed his death after the siege ended. But she now doubts they killed Mr. Noordin, citing the photographs.
If Mr. Noordin is not dead, it would be the latest in a number of near-miraculous escapes and could add to his stature among Indonesian jihadis. "I think he probably was in the house at some point," but may have escaped, Ms. Jones said.
Other intelligence sources continue to believe Mr. Noordin was in fact killed, and even if not, that other aspects of the weekend raids were successful enough to deal a major blow to the embattled network of terrorists in Indonesia. Authorities in recent years have made great strides in combating terrorism in Indonesia, a secular Muslim country of 240 million people, arresting hundreds of alleged militants, and Mr. Noordin's network is now believed to number only around 30 people.
The live television coverage of the police offensives captivated Indonesian audiences. Local news channel tvOne showed live pictures of black-clad antiterrorism police carefully entering the farmhouse near Temanggung after they had riddled the dwelling with a volley of shots and sent in robots to sweep for bombs.
Earlier, police had set off controlled explosions in the house, shaking the building and sending plumes of smoke into the sky. The tvOne news channel reported that a man inside the building at one point called out "I am Noordin M. Top." After the siege ended, ambulances arrived and men carried coffins into the ruined house while police shook hands and congratulated one another, television pictures showed.
At the other raid, before dawn on Saturday near Jakarta, the capital, police uncovered 1,000 pounds of bombs and a car specially modified to carry them. Police opened fire on the car that returned to the house before dawn, killing two people and leading to the arrest of three others. Local media reported that the men tried to hold out, throwing pipe bombs at the police. The car, which had fake plates, had been driven from central Java, police said.
Police said that the target of the bomb was Mr. Yudhoyono's private residence, located about three miles from the house, and that terrorists planned to hit the residence two weeks from now.
"I extend my highest gratitude and respect to the people for their brilliant achievement in this operation," Mr. Yudhoyono said on Saturday, the Associated Press reported.
Police also said the dwelling was used as a safe house by Mr. Noordin and his associates two days after the Jakarta hotel bombings last month. One of the men arrested had reserved a room in the JW Marriott that the terrorists used as their command center.
Police said one of the men killed at the house was Aher Setyawan, a terrorist involved in a 2004 truck bomb attack on the Australian embassy in Jakarta, which killed nine people including the suicide bomber. He was arrested in July 2004 before the embassy bombing but was released two months later, just after the attack, due to lack of evidence and didn't go to trial, according to Ms. Jones, the expert on Islamist groups in Indonesia.
Despite those successes, the ultimate value of the weekend's missions could hinge upon whether police really did bring down Mr. Noordin.
The 40-year-old former Malaysian accountant emerged as Asia's most wanted terrorist in recent years, especially after recent arrests of Islamic militants hobbled Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian terrorist network linked to al Qaeda that was responsible for the 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali, which killed 202 mostly Western tourists.
After that, the senior leadership of Jemaah Islamiyah renounced violence and Mr. Noordin and some hard-core followers struck out alone. His hallmark has been to hit symbols of Western power. Last month's attack on the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton, which killed nine people including two suicide bombers, hit a breakfast business meeting of Western businessmen.
Existing photos of Mr. Noordin, believed to date from his 30s, show a well-groomed Malaysian man with a goatee and short dark hair. In other photos, he wears glasses and parts his hair down the middle. But he has also adopted a number of disguises, posing as an itinerant Muslim cleric, a beggar and a well-heeled businessman.
Police have at times been close on Mr. Noordin's tail. In October 2003, Indonesian police tracked Mr. Noordin to a building in the city of Bandung in west Java. When police raided the house, Mr. Noordin had vanished, leaving behind some tattered identification cards and six unexploded bombs.
Police came close again in September 2005, following his path to a safe house in Java before he escaped the search. Then, in November 2005, Indonesian police tracked Mr. Noordin and an associate to another safe house in central Java. His associate died in a hail of bullets after refusing to surrender, according to police officers at the scene, but only after Mr. Noordin had left. Mr. Noordin avoided the police yet another time in 2006 in a raid on a house in Wonosobo, a central Java town not far from Temanggung.
More recently, in June, police arrested a man in Cilacap, central Java, called Syaefuddin Zuhri, alias Sabit, who was believed to be a close associate of Mr. Noordin. That arrest came too late to stop the Jakarta hotel bombings the following month, which police believe were organized from Cilacap. But the detention gave police information they used to further their investigations.
Soon after the attacks, they raided an Islamic boarding school in the town run by Mr. Noordin's father-in-law and found explosives similar to an undetonated bomb in Room 1808 of the JW Marriott, which the bombers had used as a command center before the blasts. Police also arrested Mr. Noordin's wife in Cilacap.
Authorities then put a $100,000 bounty on Mr. Noordin. Early on Friday, their search led them to arrest two people in a market in Temanggung in connection with the hotel attacks. It was unclear what evidence drew the police to Temanggung, but questioning of the two arrested men led them to the farmhouse, which is owned by their uncle, an elderly Islamic school teacher.
Hundreds of police arrived at the farmhouse on Friday and began shooting at whomever was holed up inside at around 5 p.m. local time. The standoff lasted through the night with sporadic automatic gunfire and bomb explosions.
Around dawn on Saturday, a major explosion was heard in the house and later police snipers on a nearby wooded hill intensified their attack on the property, which is surrounded by rice paddies. After the siege ended, police cleared the house, bringing out the dead body that police and antiterrorism officials later said they believed to be Mr. Noordin.
Write to Tom Wright at tom.wright@wsj.com
