Police Kill Bali Mastermind

Give my best to Allah, maggot.

Counterterrorism forces have shot and killed one of Southeast Asia’s most-wanted Islamic militants, Indonesia’s president said Wednesday.

The police said the militant, who went by only one name, Dulmatin, was a senior operative for Jemaah Islamiyah, the Southeast Asian terrorist network with links to Al Qaeda. He was killed in a raid near an internet cafe in Jakarta on Tuesday morning, the authorities said.

The authorities had accused Mr. Dulmatin of setting and triggering one of the bombs used in an attack on a Bali nightclub in 2002 that killed 202 people.

Mr. Dulmatin’s death is a major victory for Indonesia’s counterterrorism unit, which has severely weakened the militant branch of Jemaah Islamiyah over the last eight years, killing or capturing most of its senior leadership.

The twin bombings of the Marriot and Ritz-Calrton hotels last July, however, demonstrated how resilient Indonesia’s terrorism networks can be. Those bombings killed seven people and injured more than 50.

Mr. Dulmatin had also been sought in the Philippines, where he fled after the Bali bombings and, terrorism experts said, joined the Islamist separatist group Abu Sayyaf.

The Philippine police had several times come close to catching him, most recently in 2008, when they said they had killed him. It was later determined that Mr. Dulmatin had escaped.

The United States government had offered a $10 million reward for Mr. Dulmatin’s capture.

Mr. Dulmatin, who the police say was in his late 30s, was accused of setting off one of the 2002 Bali bombs with a cellphone and of being one of the bomb makers. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia discussed Mr. Dulmatin’s death during a lunch in Canberra, where he is meeting with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia.

Families of those killed by this monster welcome the news.

“Hopefully, the death of Dulmatin can ease the grievance endured by the families and friends of the victims,” Raden Supriyo Laksono, the chairman of the Istana Dewata Foundation, an organization for the victims and families of the Bali bombing, told kompas.com.