'Demolition man' Patek accused of Bali bombings

Indonesia's Umar Patek, dubbed the "Demolition Man", is accused of being behind the deadly 2002 Bali attacks that triggered a decade-long crackdown on terrorism in the Southeast Asian nation. Patek, 45, is alleged to have been an expert bombmaker with the regional terrorist organisation Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) and is believed to have contacts with the central command of Al-Qaeda's international terrorist network. Born into a family of Yemeni descent in Pemalang, central Java, on July 20, 1966, Patek admits to attending a mujahedeen militant camp on the Afghan-Pakistani border. He became Indonesia's most-wanted terror suspect after the Bali bombings and had a $1 million bounty on his head under the US Rewards for Justice programme. After more than eight years on the run, he was arrested in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad in January 2011, where US commandos killed Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden four months later. He was extradited to Indonesia and his trial began in February this year. The only suspect yet to be tried in connection with the Bali bombings is Riduan Isamuddin, known as Hambali, who allegedly helped orchestrate the attacks and has been detained at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay since 2006, accused of having financial links to Al-Qaeda. US Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent Frank Pellegrino testified in April that Patek was a known bombmaking teacher among militants in the region and that he planned to kill US troops. Pellegrino quoted a witness interviewed by the FBI in the Philippines, who said Patek "was interested in going back to Pakistan and Afghanistan and working with Osama bin Laden" and reconnecting links with Al-Qaeda, which Patek denies. Farihin, a fellow JI member who goes by one name, who was twice jailed in Indonesia for Islamic militancy, told AFP that "Umar is an expert in demolition". The allegations inspired Patek's nickname "Demolition Man" in local media, but Patek has painted himself as a little fish in the JI network, admitting only to mixing 50 kilograms out of a tonne of chemicals for the Bali attacks. He claims to have made an 11th-hour bid to stop the operation, saying it made better sense to commit jihad abroad. "If you want to do jihad, do it in another country such as Palestine, where Islamic people need help," he told the court earlier this month. He has begged the court for mercy, saying the attacks were "not my soul's calling" and "against my conscience". Patek has maintained he is too small to have helped with the logistics of transporting the heavy explosives and denies any expertise in bombmaking. According to a copy of his indictment, Patek fled to the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines after the Bali bombings. He was said to have joined Mindanao's Moro Islamic Liberation Front and planned to move to Afghanistan to help fight US troops. The indictment says he returned to Indonesia in June 2009 to join Dulmatin, one of the alleged masterminds of the Bali attacks who was killed by police shortly afterwards. Patek allegedly used simple household tools, including a rice ladle, to assemble the Bali bombs, which were kept in ordinary filing cabinets, the indictment says. With bombmaker Azahari Husin, a Malaysian killed at a hideout on Java island, Patek assembled the detonating cord and then loaded the filing cabinets into a car, the document reads. After his 2009 return to Indonesia, Patek and his Philippine wife Ruqayyah Husein Luceno hid for a year in east Jakarta and elsewhere before heading to the Pakistani city Lahore using false identities, according to court documents. An Indonesian court in January sentenced Luceno to 27 months in prison for falsifying her identity in order to obtain an Indonesian passport. Patek is also wanted in the Philippines, where he allegedly plotted attacks with militants after escaping the Indonesian dragnet. He is believed to be indirectly associated with Hambali and radical Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, who was jailed last June for funding terrorism.