HONG KONG: For the past 13 years, al-Qaeda’s most powerful leader in Southeast Asia, Indonesian Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, has been held in Guantanamo Bay prison, out of public sight but still very much in the minds of militants and security agencies across the region.
Hambali, 52, has a fearsome reputation. The man, known as the Osama bin Laden of Southeast Asia, is thought to have masterminded the Bali bombings that killed more than 200 people in 2002, the Christmas Eve multi-city church bombings in Indonesia that killed 18 in 2000, and the Jakarta Marriott Hotel car bombing that killed 12 in 2003.