Book extract: How police caught the Bali bomber as told in Defeating Terror by David Craig
BOOK EXTRACT: Former Australian Federal Police agent David Craig reveals how a phone number passed onto police in the dead of night led to the cornering the mastermind behind the Bali bombing.
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BOOK EXTRACT: About 2am, I was woken by a soft knocking on my door.
I sprang to my feet and before I was fully awake, I’d opened the door. There in front of me was an Indonesian man I hadn’t seen before.
“You are Craig?” he asked.
“David, David Craig, yes,” I mumbled, still not fully awake.
“I have something for you, you have pen and paper?”
“Sure hang on a sec,” I said as I picked up a piece of stationery and pen.
“Write this down,” he instructed.
Now partially awake I asked, “Who are you?”
Without answering, he read out an Indonesian mobile phone number, which I wrote down before my fatigued memory lost it forever.
“This is for Australian only.”
“Just for Aussie only,” he repeated and he turned and walked away.
Legally, I wasn’t a police officer in Indonesia. I didn’t have any police powers, and I couldn’t detain or question him.
I closed the door, got dressed and went back to the Forward Command Post. There were still a few AFP and INP judiciously working away processing Salik’s and Misno’s items.
I logged into my computer and entered the phone number into the database.
Out of the approximate 26,000 entries in the electronic investigation file — nothing.
‘F--k, I’ll deal with this in the morning,’ I thought as I logged off.
The following morning, I met Sam for breakfast.
“Mate, this one’s just between you and I. Can you work on this phone number but don’t tell anyone else please?”
“That’s all very secret squirrel. Where’d the number come from?”
“Can’t say, just see what you can find out about it. It might be a good one or it might be a total furphy.”
About 10am, Sam asked if I wanted to go for a coffee, indicating he had something to tell me.
“Where did you get that number from, Ice?”
“Like I said, mate, I can’t say. What’d you find out?”
“It’s a legitimate Indonesian phone number. It’s been connected for about ten weeks. The SIM card was bought from Surabaya.”
“I put the phone number in the database and it’s one of the 20 or so numbers INP found written on a page in Misno’s house,” Sam said, trying to control his excitement.
“But I’d already run the number last night, and it drew a blank.”
“The last of the property was only entered in the database this morning, so perhaps it wasn’t there when you searched,” Sam said.
“We can’t sit on this information. We need to get a phone intercept.”
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FIVE days later, at about 5am on 9 November, I was once again woken by a soft knock at the door.
This time my head switched on a lot faster and I was prepared to grill the mystery man for more information.
However, as I opened the door I saw Harta’s familiar smile and gleaming gold tooth.
“Dave, you’ve gotta come into the FCP, we have something good.”
With his usual quiet demeanour Harta said, “This is a message that was just texted to the Misno number, about an hour ago,” as he handed me a piece of paper with the English translation: T wants cake. Semarang.
“T! That’s gotta be Top!” I said.
“Yes, that’s what we think too. We’ve captured the number that sent the text, but it’s turned off at the moment so we don’t have a location. But the Misno number is still turned on. It’s currently outside Surabaya and by the pings it’s heading slowly towards Semarang,” Harta said.
Over the next few hours, frantic INP surveillance vehicles were racing along the 300kms of fragmented Jalan Pantura highway trying to marry up the pings with traffic moving along the highway.
Not a needle in a haystack, but not far from it either.
Travelling among the many vehicles on the highway towards Semarang that day was Cholili on his motorcycle.
In his backpack was a modular bomb, one of many that he and Azhari had assembled since the Bali attack. Around his waist was a bum bag bomb, primed and ready to detonate.
Then the ping on the tracking laptop disappeared. The phone had been turned off.
“He’s turned the phone off!” the tracking officer yelled into the phone.
Then, one of the team rang Gilang: “I’ve just seen Cholili. I’m sure it’s him.”
A short time later three covert INP officers discreetly converged on Cholili.
“Hey,” one of the officers said, expecting to have a conversation.
Immediately Cholili sprang to his feet, surprising the officers.
“Get back! I’ve got a bomb!”
“Okay, take it easy,” said one of the officers as he re-holstered his pistol.
As soon as the firearm was secured, the officer courageously dived at Cholili’s waist, tackling him to the ground. Cholili had his hand on the detonation switch but didn’t activate it.
“Okay, okay, stop. Don’t hurt me,” he squealed.
Cholili was whisked off to a Semarang safe house to be interviewed. He couldn’t talk fast enough as he attempted to save himself.
He immediately told police that Azhari was staying in a villa in Batu, Malang with a person he knew as Arman.
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JUST after 2pm, my phone rang. It was a very excited Gilang.
“Dave, we are about to pounce. We have Azhari surrounded in Batu. This is it! I’ve gotta go.”
From behind the concrete fence of a property about 100m from Azhari’s villa, Gilang shattered the Batu silence as he squeezed the trigger on the loud hailer.
“Azhari Husin. This is superintendent Gilang Herianto. You are surrounded. You and anyone else in there need to come out with your hands up. Now!”
Gilang’s tinny-sounding, amplified command reverberated between the villas down the narrow street and slowly faded away. Then a single gunshot cracked from the house.
Its projectile parted the tensed flesh of a Brimob officer’s thigh before striking the bone, crippling him. Before he had hit the ground, Indonesian police returned with incredible firepower from all directions, shattering the windows and punctuating the exterior cement walls with bullet hail-marks.
After the intense volley, silence again returned.
“Azhari, can you hear me?” blasted the loud hailer.
“Yes, I can hear you. No more shooting, I’ve been hurt. I can’t get up,” screamed Azhari.
Suddenly, a plastic Tupperware container was thrown through the shredded curtain of the front window, landing on the ground next to the fence.
The container exploded its hellfire of white-hot ball bearings.
Immediately a rain of fire from the snipers poured in through the villa windows.
Arman lay prone on the floor unharmed, but frozen by fear as the bullets peppered the floor around him.
Sheltering under a front window, Azhari primed another bomb and, during a pause in the gunfire, he threw it with all his strength towards the police, now cowering behind fences and vehicles just metres away.
In response, Gilang, Harta and the rest of the Detachment 88 officers fired their weapons from every quarter.
Uninjured, Azhari primed another bomb and threw it through the window onto the street, sending shrapnel ricocheting in all directions.
It was only a matter of time until Azhari would find his range.
No sooner had the covering police fire paused than the intervening silence was shattered with another explosive device thrown from the house. Instantly, the police replied with more gunfire.
This sequence was repeated like a deadly tennis match volleying bombs and gunfire for the next 30 minutes, until Gilang ordered the police to stop shooting.
“Azhari come out now with your hands up. Now! Quickly!” Gilang yelled.
“Why don’t you come in and arrest me,” taunted Azhari.
Not taking the wannabe martyr’s bait, Gilang commanded, “Come out now. There’s no escape for you.”
From crime scene analysis, it appears Azhari then slid a suicide vest across the hallway to Arman.
Azhari slithered into his own vest and must have seen Arman was struggling to fit the device. Considering the police had failed to take the bait and come into the house, it’s likely at this stage that Azhari was planning for himself and Arman to charge at the police and detonate themselves within killing range of their enemy.
Apparently seeing Arman’s difficulty, Azhari sprang from his firing position and sprinted across the room and into the crosshairs of a Brimob sniper who fired into Azhari’s chest, felling him.
Stunned, Arman must have struggled but eventually pulled the vest on as he watched in horror while Azhari writhed on the floor like an injured snake, smearing claret across the tiles.
Perhaps encouraged by Azhari, or motivated by his own wish to die as a martyr, Arman crouched in position and readied himself for his death sprint for Allah.
Arman’s vest was fitted with two switches, the right switch for immediate detonation and the left switch for a delay detonation — perfect for activating before running at the police.
When there was a break in the gunfire, Arman pressed the left (delay detonation) switch downwards, but in doing so his shaking hand also simultaneously pressed the right switch.
Electrons instantaneously flowed from the 9-volt battery through the circuitry, detonating the explosive packages.
The fiery fist of the blast punched Azhari’s ragdoll body across the floor, collapsing the kitchen wall on top of him. There he died, his body riddled with ball bearings, a victim of his own infernal designs.
This is an edited extract from Defeating Terror by David Craig published by Hardie Grant Books RRP $29.99, available nationally.
HERALD SUN SHOP: Buy Defeating Terror — Behind the hunt for the Bali bombers for $26.99 including delivery. Order online at heraldsun.com.au/shop or call 1300 306 107. For mail order, post a cheque/money order to: Herald Sun Shop, PO Box 14730, Melbourne VIC 8001.
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