Among Southeast Asia's most-wanted terrorists were Azhari Husin and Mohammed Noordin Top, both Malaysian-born members of Jemaah Islamiyah. Husin, a Britain-educated engineer and explosives expert, and Top, a former accountant, are thought to have been the masterminds behind an August 2003 attack on the Marriott and a September 2004 car bomb outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. Husin was killed in a police raid in 2005, while Top is believed to still be in hiding.
Until his arrest in 2003, Hambali played the most important leadership role in Jemaah Islamiyah, according to U.S. and Asian intelligence officials. He was the group's operational chief, they say, and was closely involved in several terrorist plots. U.S. officials announced August 14, 2003, that he was arrested by Thai authorities in Ayutthaya, about sixty miles north of Bangkok, and handed over to the Central Intelligence Agency. The U.S. State Department says Hambali was the head of Jemaah Islamiyah's regional shura, its policymaking body, and suspected of being al-Qaeda's operations director for East Asia. The State Department in January 2003 froze Hambali's assets and the assets of another suspected terrorist, Mohamad Iqbal Abdurraham, also known as Abu Jibril. The department said that, until his arrest in Malaysia in June 2001, Abu Jibril was "Jemaah Islamiyah's primary recruiter and second-in-command."