Indonesian Police Kill Bali Bombing Suspect

(March 10) -- Police in Indonesia have killed the suspected mastermind of the 2002 Bali bombings in a shootout at a Jakarta Internet café, striking a huge blow to Islamic terrorism in the world's most populous Muslim country.

Indonesia's president announced the raid during a speech today at Australia's parliament.

The suspect, who goes by the single moniker Dulmatin, was accused of assembling a car bomb and explosive vests used in a sophisticated terrorist strike on nightclubs on the resort island of Bali, which killed 202 people in 2002, including seven Americans and 88 Australians. Dulmatin is alleged to have detonated the bombs by remote control from his mobile phone. He was the last Bali bomber to evade capture, after three others were convicted and executed by firing squad in 2008.

The Bali bombings were the deadliest terror attack in Indonesia's history, and Dulmatin was the country's top fugitive.

A senior figure in the al-Qaida-linked group Jemaah Islamiyah, 40-year-old Dulmatin was one of the most-wanted terrorists in all of Southeast Asia. He's believed to have known Osama bin Laden personally and trained with al-Qaida in Afghanistan in the early 1990s. He escaped to the Philippines after the Bali attacks and is said to have been working there with Abu Sayyaf, another Islamic fundamentalist group. Washington put out a $10 million reward for his capture.

On a three-day visit to Australia, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono described an operation by anti-terrorism police Tuesday in Jakarta, in which they traced militants to an Internet café in the Pamulang area. One of the suspects opened fire on police when they entered the café, and they returned fire, killing three men, he said.

"Today I can announce to you that after a successful police raid against the terrorists hiding out in Jakarta yesterday, we can confirm that one of those that was killed was Dulmatin, one of the top Southeast Asian terrorists that we have been looking for," Yudhoyono said through an interpreter in Canberra. "Indonesian authorities will continue to hunt them down and do all we can to prevent them [terrorists] from harming our people."

At first, police would not officially confirm that Dulmatin was among those killed, cautious of repeating what happened in 2008 when Philippine authorities mistakenly claimed to have killed him. But Yudhoyono later announced it after delivering the news first to Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

"This has been a very professional operation by the Indonesian security forces and it comes on top of other successful operations in recent times," Rudd said at a joint news conference carried by several media outlets. "The breakthroughs which Indonesia has made in undermining various terrorist networks have been significant."

Indonesia's anti-terrorism unit, known as Detachment 88, had launched a huge manhunt for Dulmatin after gleaning intelligence from 20 fellow members of Jemaah Islamiyah arrested last month in a raid on their training camp in Aceh province. Redoubling such efforts is also part of an anti-terrorism push ahead of President Barack Obama's scheduled visit later this month to Indonesia, where he lived for several years as a child.

Col. Bill Coultrup, commander of U.S. counterterrorism forces in the southern Philippines where Dulmatin allegedly fought in recent years with Abu Sayyaf, congratulated Indonesia on an "excellent job."

"It's a great success, but as we have seen in Iraq, in Afghanistan and other places, you may remove one leader, but there may be someone who will step up to take his place," Coultrup told The Associated Press.