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Fugitive former professor, allegedly involved in Bali and Jakarta attacks, is thought to be JI's chief bombmaker

A week after the blast at the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta, the hunt has intensified for  Azahari Husin, a bearded, British-trained Malaysian professor of statistical modelling known as  'Demolition Man' who has long been suspected as the chief bombmaker for the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) network.

Indonesian and Malaysian police have met several times since the Jakarta blast to co-ordinate the hunt for the fugitive professor who they believe is hiding in Sumatra and shuttles between there and Malaysia's west coast.

A Malaysian police team, including forensic experts, is   now in Jakarta to help its  Indonesian counterparts track down Azahari and his Indonesian chief assistant, Dul Matin, a former electronics student who had previously lived in Malaysia.

The JI has been blamed for a spate of bomb attacks across Indonesia and the Philippines since Christmas 2000.

In Malaysia they are blamed for bank robberies,  weapons financing,  raiding police armories, the fire bombings of several Hindu temples and churches and for the November 2000 murder of a Christian politician.

Immediately after the  hotel blast, suspicion fell on Azahari because the bomb ingredients, construction, detonation and use of  mobile phones and suicide drivers were similar to the Bali blasts that police say point to him and Dul.

Azahari, who has a PhD from the University of Reading in Britain, was a senior lecturer at the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia's campus in southern Johore state that borders Singapore, until he disappeared  ahead of a police dragnet that  led to the detention of 72 JI operatives.

'He is high on our wanted list  in the region,' a senior Malaysian official said.  'There is no doubt in our mind that he is the guy we all want.'

Alleged Bali bomb plotters Ali Imron and Imam Samudra have testified at their ongoing trial that it was Azahari who was given the job of attacking a 'soft target' at a meeting of militants in Thailand that was chaired by Hambali, the JI's operation chief.

They testified that Azahari visited Bali several times, picked the nightclubs as  targets and gave detailed directions for the construction and placing of the bombs. They also  claimed he wrote the JI's bomb-making manual.

Former university colleague Wan Min Wan Mat - now under detention in Malaysia - also testified at the same trials that he was instructed by Hambali to provide US$36,000 to Azahari. Prosecutors later said the money was used to finance the Bali bombs.

Although Azahari tops the list of the most-wanted JI leaders, very little is  known about him and when and how he took the road to Islamic militancy.

'All we know from his travel patterns and absence from campus is that he probably was trained at an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan in the summer of 1998 and then spent three months at a Moro Islamic Liberation Front camp in the southern Philippines in 1999,' the official said.

University officials said Azahari had picked up Islamic militancy while studying in Britain and on his return had become a pupil of  Abdullah Sungkar and Abu Bakar  Bashir - two Indonesians exiles who founded the movement  in Malaysia in 1993. Sungkar died in 1999, while Bashir is on trial in Jakarta for treason.

Analysts say it is because of leaders such as Azahari  that the JI remains a deadly organisation despite the arrest of  more than 70 operatives in Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore.

Azahari and at least three top lecturers at the Geo-Sciences faculty of the university were converted to the radical teachings of  JI. Near the university campus was the JI-operated  madrassah where many of the arrested JI leaders and foot soldiers had either studied or lectured.

Global village - A11



Joint team steps up the hunt for 'demolition man'