Azahari Husin: Azahari Husin, who was killed this week, was a bomb-making expert who became one of the most-wanted terror suspects in Southeast Asia.
Husin allegedly oversaw the assembly of the bombs that killed 202 people in Bali nightclubs three years ago.
Police confirmed from fingerprints that he was one of three men whom officers surrounded Wednesday in a hideout in the east Java city of Malang. The standoff ended in a series of explosions.
Husin, known as the "Demolition Man", was not only an explosives expert but a key figure in organising the ranks of Jemaah Islamiah, a regional network with loose ties to al-Qaeda.
He had been the target of an intense manhunt since last month's bombings of three Bali restaurants that killed 23 people, including three suicide bombers.
Born in Malaysia, Husin was by some accounts a brilliant mathematician by the time he came to study engineering in Australia in the 1970s.
He then moved to Britain and studied at the department of land management at the University of Reading. According to the university his thesis, submitted in 1990, was on the topic of house prices in Malaysia. A married father of two, Husin found work as a university lecturer in technology in Malaysia. But his transformation into an Islamist militant came several years later when he fell under the spell of the founders of Jemaah Islamiyah, including its spiritual leader, Abu Bakar Ba'asyir.
A few years later he trained in Afghanistan and the Philippines, where he concentrated on honing his skills with explosives.
Husin was believed to be the mastermind behind five of Indonesia's largest terror attacks: the bombing of churches on Christmas Eve 2000; the Bali nightclub bombings in 2002; the car bombing of the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta in 2003; the Australian embassy bombing; and the October 1st Bali restaurant bombings. Combined, those attacks killed more than 260 people and injured hundreds more. The last four were carried out by suicide bombers, which were unheard of in Indonesia until the Bali nightclub bombings. Having slipped away from police encirclement on five previous occasions, Husin was believed to have often worn an explosives belt so that he could blow himself up rather than be captured. Last year, as he fled the scene of the car bombing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, he was stopped by a traffic police officer. Husin paid the officer a small bribe and sped away on his motorcycle.
While on the run, Husin and his main collaborator, fellow Malaysian Noordin Top, largely acted autonomously, forming alliances with other militant groups and recruiting new operatives to help carry out bombings while moving from one safe house to another.
Police reported that there were 30 bombs in the houses raided this week.
Since he left home and was identified as a terror suspect some years ago, his wife Noraini - a former university employee who now suffers from throat cancer - and her family have been raising their two children in a small house in Malaysia.
Azahari Husin: born 1957; died November 9th, 2005.