The Times' Feature on the US-funded Indonesian anti-terror unit's taking out of Azahari

Bali bomber shot as he plotted new blitz - Sunday Times - Times Online
It seems US$8 million a year is what was needed to prevent the death in terrorist attrocities being planned at the time of his death by Azahari in Bali and Jakarta for Christmas Eve. That's the funding given by the Americans to create Indonesia's first anti-terrorism squad, Detachment 88. The Australians' no doubt considerable funding was extra, I suppose.

The Indonesians' mobile phone tracking technologies are sufficiently good now that the terrorists needs use couriers bearing snail mail, and it was one of the couriers who led the cops to Batu where Azahari was doing his thing. And there they found a video made by the 3 suicide bombers who perpetrated Bali2 on 1 October 2005.

Meanwhile, the brother of one of the bombers recognised one of the severed heads and contacted police, who took a DNA sample and confirmed that the bomber was Misno. According to Pravda:

Sukarto spoke at a news conference organized by the family's lawyer in the hope that reporters would no longer disturb the family once it was over. His wife cried throughout, and chose not to answer any questions.

Sukarto said [his son] Misno, the sixth of seven children, dropped out of school during junior high, and left the family's poor home near central Java's Cilacap town soon after. His last job was that of a vendor of chicken porridge, Sukarto said.

He said his family had not been attracted to hardline Islamic teachings.

"He (Misno) wasn't especially religious and neither am I," he said. "He was a normal kid."

In August, Misno returned home and told his father that he was leaving for Batam, an island near Singapore, to find work as a construction worker. Sukarto said he told him he would write him when he had settled in there. Bali