JUST before midday on Tuesday last week, a husband and his wife arrived at an Internet cafe on the second floor of a Multiplus shop-house in Pamulang, Banten. The husband began using one of the cafe’s computers. His wife went outside again and headed for the Rinova Salon located in the same shop-house complex.

A tall, heavily built man sporting a beard arrived several minutes later. He immediately proceeded to the second floor and sat down at a computer cubicle, number nine. Sidik, a Multiplus staff on duty on the first floor recognized him. “He’s been here three times,” said the 20-year-old Sidik.

A third man arrived a short time later. He also headed for the Internet cafe but quickly went back downstairs and left. Soon after, he returned with seven fully armed men. They attacked. Sidik heard the sound of several gunshots. He was frozen with fear. Later he found out that the bearded man was shot dead by a member of the Special Detachment 88 Antiterror Squad.

The dead man lived on Jl. Asem, around 300 meters from Multiplus. He had told neighbors that his name was Yahya Ibrahim and that he worked at a car and motorcycle showroom. But the following day, National Police Chief, General Bambang Hendarso Danuri, announced that Yahya was in fact Dulmatin, a terrorist suspect that they had been hunting since 2002. “The margin of error is one to 100,000 trillion,” he said referring to a DNA test.

TWO youths sat at a bus stop on Jl. Imam Bonjol in Central Jakarta. The first was Fathurrahman al-Ghozi, a veteran of the Afghanistan war from Madiun, East Java. The other was Abdul Jabar, 33. That afternoon in July 2000 they were monitoring the target of a planned terrorist attack: the home of Philippines Ambassador Leonides Caday. Jabar asked the reason for choosing the target. Ghozi responded by asking, “Do you know about the Abubakar camp?”

Jabar admitted to once seeking a television report of an attack by Philippine troops on a Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) military training camp in Mindanao, in the southern part of the country. Ghozi had been living at the Abubakar camp since 1996 and had only just arrived in Jakarta several days before they began observing the target. “The camp is gone,” Ghozi explained. “We will take revenge for that.” They observed the target until late afternoon and discovered an important fact: each day at noon the ambassador returned home for lunch.

Around the same time Amrozi, 37, who lived in Tenggulun, Lamongan, East Java, was busy looking for a car to transport a bomb. He soon found a red Suzuki van that was suitable and filed off the car’s chassis number. In the middle of his endeavors he received a phone call from Dulmatin who instructed him to purchase chemicals to make a bomb: 200 kilos of potassium chlorate, 25 kilos of sulfur and 25 kilos of powdered aluminum.

The car and the bomb-making materials were driven to Dulmatin’s house in Pekalongan, Central Java, where the bomb was assembled. The host mixed the chemical by hand: 9 kilograms of potassium chlorate for every 3 kilos of sulfur and 3 kilos of powdered aluminum. The mix was separated into portions and placed in plastic containers with a hole in the top to insert a detonator. Dulmatin then placed a bag in the car filled with modified long-distance detonators. An old walkie-talkie was used to trigger the explosion from a maximum distance of 500 meters.

Dulmatin, Amrozi and six others hurried to Jakarta. In the capital they met with Abdul Jabar and Usman, other members of the conspiracy. The date of the attack had already been decided, August 1, 2000. They took advantage of the remaining days before the date to install wadding and fuse wires.

On the day of the attack, Usman parked the car bomb near the gate to the Philippine Ambassador’s home. At 12:30pm, Ambassador Caday’s Mercedes arrived at the house. Ghozi walked along the footpath towards the target in order to reach a distance of 500 meters. Click, he pressed the walkie-talkie transmit button. Instantly, the sound of an explosion reverberated across the street. Caday who was sitting in the left-rear seat suffered four broken bones, blood was gushing from body wounds and he was struck by broken glass. Yet he survived. But the bomb killed a security guard and female pedestrian. Scores of others were injured.

This was Dulmatin’s first major action in his curriculum vitae of terrorism. Continuing to assemble bombs, he rejoined Usman and Abdul Jabar late that same year. For their next project—a series of Christmas Eve bombings—they selected three Catholic and three Protestant churches located across Jakarta. This time the attack failed because Abdullah, the person who delivered the bombs, became frightened and they were placed outside of and later exploded beyond the church complex targets. Following the attack they fled to Central Java. The next morning they watched news reports of the explosions on television at Dulmatin’s house in Pekalongan.

THE climax of Dulmatin’s terrorist career was in Bali. He arrived in the island resort’s capital of Denpasar on October 6, 2002. This time he was joined in the conspiracy by two Malaysian citizens—Dr Azahari and Noordin M. Top—as well as Imam Samudera, Umar Patek and Abdul Ghoni. Amrozi joined forces with his older brother Ali Ghufron, and his younger brother Ali Imron. They used a house on Jl. Pulau Menjangan in Denpasar as their headquarters.

Dulmatin assembled three bombs. For the first explosion that would be used as a diversion, the bomb was constructed of six pouches sewn inside a waistcoat, each containing six PVC pipes with a stick of dynamite. The second bomb—which would be used at the US Consulate—was comprised simply of a 5-kilogram package of dynamite with a long-distance detonator utilizing a Nokia cellphone. The two bombs were to be used to symbolize an attack, not to cause serious damage.

The main bomb was placed in an L300 Mitsubishi van that Amrozi had purchased on Imam Samudera’s orders. It was made up of more than 1 ton of potassium chlorate, sulfur and powdered aluminum mixed to a ratio of 3:1:1. The mixture was placed in the four drawers of several plastic cabinets connected with fuse wire and an Indian-made detonator.

Using all of his electronics skills, Dulmatin made a circuit board connected to a 9-volt battery. Placed inside a closed container, the circuit could be activated to deliver an electric charge to the detonator by one of four methods: a cellphone signal, a timer, a manual trigger or an automatic trigger. The massive bomb received the finishing touches from Azahari, the bomb specialist in the group.

On October 12, 2002, the diversionary bomb was detonated at the Sari Club in Legian. The main bomb exploded several minutes later, obliterating the nearby Paddy’s Bar. Saturday evening on the Island of Gods became a night of horror ending with 202 dead and more than 200 injured. Most of the victims were Australian citizens, including a rugby team on a holiday trip to the island.

By the time the reports of the bombings were broadcast live on television, Dulmatin and Azahari were already in Java. When the police launched an operation to hunt down the bombers—resulting in the arrest of most of the perpetrators—Dulmatin had already crossed over into the southern Philippines. There he rejoined his old colleague Al-Ghozi.

Accused of involvement in terrorist acts in the Philippines, they were hunted down by local troops. The US government promised a bounty of US$10 million to anyone who could capture or kill Dulmatin. Not surprisingly, on three separate occasions, Philippine troops claimed to have killed the man whose original name was Joko Pitono.

DULMATIN’S trail was picked up in early 2008. From the southern Philippines, he maintained communication with activists in Indonesia. A year later, according to information from several sources, he had already arrived in Jakarta. He entered in a roundabout way via Batam in the Riau Islands using a passport in the name of Yahya Ibrahim that had been issued by the East Jakarta immigration office.

According to Mawi Hartono, the neighborhood community (RT) head in charge of Jl. Asem, Pamulang, Yahya had been living in the area since April 13, 2009. According to the ID card he carried, Yahya was born in Jakarta on January 2, 1973. His address was listed as Jl. Masjid Fathul Ghofur RT1/RW4, Cibubur village, Ciracas, East Jakarta.

Yahya lived in a rented house owned by Fauzi Syarief, a government healthcare employee. He claimed to work at a car showroom in Ciputat, Tangerang. A short time later Yahya took in two other men who said they were named Umar and Muhamad Subqha. Umar told neighbors that he was a student at the Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University. Subqha meanwhile said that he worked with Yahya selling cars.

Yahya often visited a house rented by a couple named Marko and Tari, some 300 meters from where he lived. The rented house on Jl. Madrasah was also occupied by Nurhasan and Ridwan, who were later reported to have acted as Dulmatin’s bodyguards. “Yahya visited them at night,” said Imas, who lives in a rented house next to Marko. When they arrived, usually they, “Went back and forth first, and only then entered the house. As if they were checking out the situation.”

Four months after the arrival of Yahya alias Dulmatin in Pamulang, the suicide bombs exploded at the Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Central Jakarta. The terrorist attacks prompted police to mobilize all their available forces to track down the perpetrators. This climaxed on September 17, 2009, when the Special Detachment 88 shot and killed Noordin on the outskirts of Solo, Central Java.

Following Noordin’s death, according to police information, the JI group appointed Dulmatin to head the group’s military wing. He took over the coordination of activities and began recruiting new ‘troops’. He also rejoined two of his old colleagues: Abdullah Sunata and Pura Sudarma alias Jaja. Sunata was once jailed on charges of hiding Noordin. Jaja meanwhile was a long-term fugitive from justice having overseen the training and recruitment of several suicide bombers including Ikhwan Maulana, who detonated the Ritz-Carlton bomb last year.

In early January they began to organize tadrib or military training, as required in a jihad or holy war in the Jantho area of Greater Aceh. The participants came from various parts of the country including Central Java and Jakarta. One of them was Sapta Adi alias Ismet Hakiki alias Syailendra, a man who originated from Banten and lived in Petamburan, Central Jakarta. In 2004, his signature was apparent in the bombing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta. He also lent his motorbike to Azahari and Muhammad Rois in order to monitor the project.

Malik, his neighbor, said that Syailendra once worked as a security guard at the Senayan Plaza in Central Jakarta. He met with Syailendra late last year. “At the time he said he wanted to go to Aceh,” Malik told Tempo.

According to Malik, Syailendra often disappeared then resurfaced. Each time he returned home, he said, Syailendra was accompanied by different people. He once saw his neighbor arrive with five others, all around 20 years old. “He also once invited a person from Petamburan [to stay], but it didn’t work out,” he said.

The police were not caught napping and soon got wind of the illegal activities in Aceh. On February 22, the Special Detachment 88 raided the training camp. Scores of people were arrested including Syailendra and a colleague from Banten, Zaky Rahmatullah, along with Yudi Zulfahri from Aceh. Yudi, a graduate of the State Institute of Public Administration, proved most willing to talk.

According to a source in the Special Detachment, the three suspects all mentioned one name: Mansur. At meetings in Jakarta, Mansur claimed to live in Pamulang. It was he who coordinated the dispatch of participants from outside Aceh, supplied weapons and funded the training. Because he was considered to be an important figure, the Special Detachment began investigating the man. Information resulting from the questioning of Syailendra, Zaky and Yudi was sent immediately to Jakarta.

In coordination with the operation in Aceh, it turns out that the Special Detachment was also doing undercover work shadowing JI network members in Jakarta. One of these was a person named Yahya in Pamulang. He had attracted police attention because he had very actively established contact with the JI group in the Philippines, both through email as well as phone contacts. Special Detachment members photographed him from a distance. “But we didn’t know who the man shadowing us was,” said a Tempo source.

The information gained in Aceh proved important. The Special Detachment concluded that Mansur was in fact the same person as the Yahya that they had been following in Pamulang. They then showed the photographs of Yahya to Yudi, who immediately said: “That’s him, Mansur.”

Based on the results of an analysis and cross-check of bank data in their possession, the Special Detachment concluded that Mansur, alias Yahya, was in fact Dulmatin. National Police antiterror teams were immediately deployed to hunt them down. One team was deployed to Cipayung in East Jakarta to pursue Abdullah Sunata but found his house was empty. Another team was sent to Depok to track down a person called Sofyan and succeeded in arresting the police deserter. Yet another team was sent to Pamulang to capture Yahya alias Mansur alias Dulmatin.

The team in Pamulang disguised themselves in various ways. Some went back and forth in the vicinity of Yahya’s home. Others rented computers on the second floor of Multiplus. On Monday morning last week, a silver Elf Minibus arrived and parked not far from Multiplus. Sukirman, a Koperasi taxi driver suspected that it was a police vehicle conducting surveillance. “The thing was, the car came back again the next day,” he said.

This time the Elf Minibus was followed by four Toyota Avanzas, which were parked outside Multiplus. Also visible was a van. Several minutes after the bearded man entered the Multiplus shop, men armed with assault rifles exited the vehicles and proceeded to the second floor. Shots were heard a few seconds later.

An hour later, Special Detachment members also raided the home of Yahya alias Dulmatin. Two people suddenly took off riding a Suzuki Thunder motorbike. Thirty meters from the main road police fired on them. The two were Ridwan and Hasan Nur, Dulmatin’s bodyguards. Back at Yahya’s house, police also arrested two people named Bakti Rahma alias Abu Haikal and Syaiful Siregar alias Imam.

Less than a year after his return from the southern Philippines, Dulmatin was dead. His curriculum vitae of terror ended in a computer cubicle at an Internet cafe.