PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia, 19 August 2003 — The Malaysian wife of captured terror suspect Hambali is being questioned and could be an important witness to the activities of the Al-Qaeda-linked network he is accused of leading, the country’s deputy leader said yesterday.
Noralwizah Lee Abdullah, 33, was arrested Aug. 11 with her husband in Thailand and handed to Malaysian authorities who brought her to a secret location. Police say she has crucial information about Hambali’s activities, his associates and their whereabouts.
“We believe that Hambali’s wife may have useful information for us,” Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi told reporters. “She is certainly important as far as we are concerned.”
Abdullah, who is also Home Minister responsible for police, said Noralwizah would be held for questioning, possibly under a tough security law that allows indefinite detention without trial.
Inspector General of Police Norian Mai said Malaysia would share any information obtained from Noralwizah with intelligence agencies in other Southeast Asian nations in order to cripple militant activities.
“We will try to get more information from her, as she has been together with Hambali and may have the vital information needed by us,” Norian was quoted as saying by the national news agency, Bernama.
At least five of Hambali’s henchmen are still on the loose in Bangkok, the Bangkok Post reported yesterday, citing an intelligence official. But Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra denied the report, saying the terrorist kingpin’s operations in Thailand were wiped out with last week’s arrest.
Malaysian authorities are playing a key role in the hunt for suspected members of the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist network accused in a string of bombings and plots in Southeast Asia.
Hambali, an Indonesian whose real name is Riduan Isamuddin, is the group’s alleged operations chief, and is accused of masterminding last year’s nightclub blasts that killed 202 people on the Indonesian island of Bali and other bombings.
Thailand handed Hambali to US authorities on Wednesday. He was taken out of Thailand but his whereabouts are unknown.
Noralwizah is a Malaysian citizen who married Hambali in the early 1990s after they met at a rural Malaysian religious school. Hambali was among dozens of Indonesian religious radicals who fled a late-1980s crackdown and moved to Malaysia, where they built a network using an Islamic school as a recruiting station.
Jemaah Islamiyah is suspected in the Aug. 5 Marriott hotel bombing in Jakarta in which 12 people died, and a spate of deadly explosions in the Philippines and terror plots elsewhere. Hambali disappeared after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.
