Riduan Isamuddin, also known by the nom de guerre Hambali (born April 4, 1964), is the former military leader of the Indonesian terrorist organization Jemaah Islamiyah (JI). He is currently in American custody at Guantanamo Bay detainment camp in Cuba. He is currently awaiting trial in a military commission.
Hambali was often described as "the Osama bin Laden of Southeast Asia". Some media reports describe him as bin Laden's lieutenant for Southeast Asian operations. Other reports describe him as an independent peer. He was highly trusted by al-Qaeda and was the main link between the two organisations. Hambali was a close friend of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who planned the Bojinka plot and the September 11 attacks. Hambali envisioned creating a Muslim state, in the form of an Islamic superpower (a theocracy) across Southeast Asia, with himself as its leader (Caliph). His ambition was to rule Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and parts of the Philippines, Myanmar, and Thailand.
He received increasing attention in the aftermath of the 2002 Bali bombings, in which 202 people died.
He was eventually apprehended in a joint operation by the CIA and Thai police in 2003. He is currently imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, after three years of CIA custody in a secret location.
Riduan Isamuddin was born Encep Nurjaman in the rice belt of Sukamanah, a small village in Cianjur Regency, in the province of West Java, Indonesia. He was the son of a peasant farmer, and was the second of thirteen children. He first became involved with Jemaah Islamiyah as a teenager. He was a diligent student at his Islamic high school, Al-Ianah. He travelled to Afghanistan in 1983 to fight the Soviet Union during the Soviet–Afghan War. During his three years as a mujahid, from 1987 to 1990, he met Osama bin Laden. Friends and family in Indonesia say they did not know of his activities overseas.
His name has been transliterated into English text in several different ways over the years, including;
His name was spelled Hambali, Riduan bin Isomuddin on the Summary of Evidence memo prepared for his Combatant Status Review.
His name was spelled Ryuduan bin Isomuddin by Scott McClellan during a press briefing. McClellan spelled his name letter by letter.
His name is spelled Riduan Isamuddin in the report of the 9/11 Commission.
His name was spelled Nurjaman Riduan Isamuddin by the U.S. Treasury.
In 1991, Nurjaman returned to Cianjur for one week, before going to Malaysia, where he met the two co-founders of JI, Abdullah Sungkar and Abubakar Bashir. The three lived in a housing compound in Kampung Sungai Manggis, Banting, Selangor. Nurjaman internationalized the terrorist group's activities and took on a new name in his permanent residence permit: Riduan Isamuddin. His nickname, Hambali, is an allusion to Hanbali, an Islamic school of jurisprudence.
The two co-founders sent their students to "study" in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The students actually fought the Soviets until the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan. A woman named Noralwizah Lee Abdullah had gone to Malaysia for religious schooling. She secretly married Isamuddin after meeting him at the Luqmanul Hakiem School in Ulu Tiram, Johor. The school was founded by Sungkar and Bashir.
Initially, Isamuddin struggled to make a living for his family. He switched from selling kebabs to patenting medicines. He soon disappeared from his home for weeks at a time, and he received many visitors at home. He eventually came to own a red hatchback and several cell phones. Investigators say that many calls on those cell phones were made to Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Osama bin Laden's brother in law, who had arrived back in Manila, Philippines in 1991.
After Arab visitors gave his family much money, he founded a shell company, Konsojaya, in June 1994. Ostensibly an import-export company trading in palm oil between Malaysia and Afghanistan, it was essentially a front company for terrorism. Wali Khan Amin Shah, who would become the financier of Operation Bojinka, was a director of Konsojaya. The company provided financial assistance to the project until it was discovered by investigators on a laptop computer after an apartment fire on January 6, 1995. Shah was arrested in the Philippines but escaped on a short order. Shah was arrested in Malaysia in December 1995. Both Shah and mastermind Ramzi Yousef, who escaped the Philippines but was arrested in Lahore, Pakistan, were extradited to the United States. They were both convicted and sentenced to life in prison for participating in the project.
Hambali's company attracted attention of investigators so his dealings went quiet for a while. He decided to preach, raise money, and recruit for his cause. He went underground in 2000 and started a wave of church-bombings in Indonesia. He always had a "hands-on" technique; he met his foot soldiers and came to them "with detailed plans, plenty of cash and two of his own bombmakers." He always fled before the bombing commenced. Meanwhile, the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, Abu Bakr Bashir, was preaching jihad at his schools while denying links to Islamic militants.
Hambali planned and attended the January 2000 Al Qaeda Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Among the others present were two 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. This gathering in Kuala Lumpur was observed by the CIA and Malaysian authorities, but what specifically was being said at the meetings was not picked up. Hambali also provided money and documents to Zacarias Moussaoui in October of that year. However claims by Singaporean security analyst Rohan Gunaratna that he had flown to Australia were dismissed by Australian authorities.
After the 2002 Bali bombings, in which 202 people were killed, Hambali received more attention from the United States. In the years leading up to the attack, the Indonesian government's action against Islamic militants had been minimal. Following the attack, Abu Bakr Bashir was arrested as part of a crack down on Jemaah Islamiyah. He was wanted in Indonesia
for the bombings of several churches in the region, and wanted for the Bali bombings and a failed plot on several targets in Singapore.