Hezbollah (31 page)

Preparations for the March 1994 bombing began the previous summer, around the same time senior Iranian intelligence and security officials met in the Iranian city of Mashhad and gave the green light to another Hezbollah plot targeting a Jewish community center in Argentina.
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In the summer of 1993, Pandu and Abu al-Ful traveled to Zamboanga City to procure two Philippine passports, one featuring Pandu’s picture and the other a picture of Pandu’s wife. These were used throughout the preparation for the attack and came from a particularly reliable source.
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For years after the failed 1994 bombing, Pandu and his cohorts continued to rely on one document procurer and forger more than any other, Majid Galad, a Christian Filipino convert to Islam based in Zamboanga City. When law enforcement officials interviewed Pandu after his arrest, he first referred to the forger as Philip, apparently the operational name he used with customers seeking false documents.
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Having picked up the new passports, Pandu and Abu al-Ful flew to Bangkok, where they found and rented a house just outside of town “which became their storehouse and safe house for the preparation of their terrorism mission.” It was at the safe house that Pandu first met several other Hezbollah activists, including three who went by the names Mouhandes (meaning “engineer”), Muda, and Tony. According to what Pandu told investigators, Tony did not stay at the safe house but rather at an apartment in town near the Israeli embassy. The reason: Tony was to collect “information on security details and the physical environment” of the embassy.
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The cell members were careful to acquire the explosive precursor chemicals in small batches over a period of time, but before doing that they covered the windows
of the safe house with newspapers to conceal their activities. They brought the chemicals to the safe house and stored them in a large metal drum that Pandu purchased himself.
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Meanwhile, over the next few months Pandu oversaw the cell’s progress in Bangkok and met two or three times with Abu al-Ful at the Soi Nana restaurant in Bangkok’s red light district near the Grace Hotel.
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The hotel, one reviewer notes, “is frequently visited by Middle Eastern and Asian tourists for two main reasons: it is located in the center of the red light area and also close to the Bumrungrad Hospital.”
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Using a forged Philippine passport in the name of Abraham Buenaventura, Pandu apparently traveled to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in July 1993. Investigations in Thailand later revealed that someone named Abraham Buenaventura was a primary suspect in the bombing.
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He returned to Saudi Arabia several times over the next few years following the failed embassy bombing, even as he was actively engaged in other plots in Southeast Asia on behalf of Hezbollah. Authorities do not know the reason for this summer 1993 visit, though the fact that he visited Riyadh and Dammam (the capital of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, dominated by Saudi Shi’a) in 1994, Jeddah at least twice and Riyadh once in 1995, and then Dubai in the United Arab Emirates in 1996 raises suspicions that he may have been in contact with elements tied to Saudi Hezbollah, a local Shi’a terrorist group also supported by Iran with close ties to Lebanese Hezbollah.
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Throughout the preparations for the 1994 embassy bombing, Pandu did much of the actual legwork himself, including searching for a truck to rent for the attack. His search took some time, since most reputable companies insisted he provide the necessary documentation, such as his passport. Eventually, he found in Ms. Linchi Singtongam someone willing to rent him a truck without paperwork.
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Then, in February 1994, after some six months of logistics and operational planning and with just weeks to go before the planned attack, Pandu left the country to meet with both Abu al-Ful and Bassam in Kuala Lumpur. Meeting there provided a measure of extra security, he understood in retrospect, because he was about to receive the C4 explosives for the truck bomb. At the time Pandu apparently did not know what to expect from the meeting. He told authorities that two Hezbollah operatives handed him “a bag filled with what seemed like candy bars” and that he was simply told to return to the safe house outside Bangkok with the bag. Only afterward did he realize the “candy bars” were high-grade explosives. Pandu stated that he believed Abu al-Ful and Bassam also caught a flight to Bangkok at that time.
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On March 10, 1994, the day before the bombing, Pandu had the rented truck driven to the safe house and told the driver to go home and return the following day. While Tony conducted surveillance of the embassy and Pandu oversaw procurement details, Musa (described as a welding expert) and Mouhandes (an explosives expert) prepared the explosive and, with the truck now delivered to the safe house, installed it in the truck. Abu al-Ful took part in each of these steps as well, at different points in the preparation, when he was in town.
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Then, concerned about the operational security of allowing the driver, who had now seen the safe house and
may have seen or at least wondered about the plans for his truck, Mouhandes decided to kill him. According to a Philippine report, Mouhandes strangled the driver from behind while Pandu rained punches on the driver’s midsection. The group then helped carry the driver’s body into the truck and buried it under the fertilizer and explosives in the metal drum. Pandu and Abu al-Ful then drove the truck into town, parking it overnight in a parking lot near the Israeli embassy.
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By this point the group was joined by the intended suicide bomber, and the final stage of the operation, planned for the following morning, was left to him. Pandu received instructions to leave the country for Indonesia, where he met Abu al-Ful. After the collision that derailed the attack, the only trail investigators found was that someone using a Philippine passport under the name Abraham Buenaventura had purchased the metal drum, rented the safe house, and bought the chemicals. But it was not until Pandu was captured five years later that they made the connection between Abraham Buenaventura and Pandu Yudhawinata. And until then no one else involved in the case was identified.
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In Jakarta, Abu al-Ful informed Pandu that their mission had failed and gave Pandu a ready-made Nigerian passport with his picture, on which he was instructed to travel to Lebanon via Cyprus. For reasons unknown, Cypriot authorities stopped Pandu and required him to stay at a hotel overnight, but he was cleared for travel the following day and proceeded to Lebanon, where he was told he should expect to remain, under the radar and under the care of Hezbollah, for four to six months. At some point during his stay, still in 1994, Pandu met another Indonesian Hezbollah recruit named Herman Mothar, who had previously studied in Iran and served as an operational facilitator for Hezbollah’s terrorist wing.
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By one account it was Pandu who first spotted Herman and introduced him to Abu al-Ful.
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The two traveled to Baalbek, a Hezbollah stronghold in the Bekaa Valley where the group ran training camps. At the training camps, Pandu and Herman learned military tactics and received explosives training. When finished, they assumed new operational names: Abu Mohammad for Pandu, Hussein for Herman. Abu al-Ful ultimately determined that Herman was “not too bright” and broke off Herman’s contact with Hezbollah.
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And yet, even while the investigation into the Bangkok bombing was ongoing, Abu al-Ful himself continued to plot attacks against targets in the region.

Pandu and Abu al-Ful’s botched plot to bomb the Israeli embassy in 1994 did not dissuade them from attempting to carry out other attacks in the region. If anything, the near success of their effort appears to have convinced them of the potential of Hezbollah’s Southeast Asian networks in terms of logistics, document procurement, and operations targeting Israeli and American interests.

In between Pandu’s trips to Iran and Lebanon for additional training, Pandu’s smaller missions for Hezbollah, according to Philippine investigators, involved “procurement of armaments in Indonesia and passports in other parts of Southeast Asia and the conduct of casings on terrorist targets and recruitment of members.”
And although he was then living in Malaysia, he was also involved in storing weapons in Thailand and the Philippines, “presumably in preparation for future missions.”
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Less than a year after Cypriot authorities detained Pandu, he returned to Cyprus. While there, Pandu sought a visa from the Iraqi embassy, apparently to obtain cover for other operational travel. He was denied and told to seek a visa from the country from which he would depart on his intended trip to Iraq. By one account, comprising a list of Pandu’s known international travels and the purpose of each visit, Pandu went to Nicosia in 1994 simply “to obtain information regarding immigration.”
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A more detailed accounting of his visit to Cyprus, however, reveals the trip had an operational purpose. According to Philippine information, Abu al-Ful sent Pandu to Cyprus “to collect operational intelligence on the security measures in the airport and matters regarding immigration.” Abu al-Ful traveled to Cyprus himself and informed Pandu on arrival that “a member of the Hezbollah’s Special Attack Apparatus wanted to meet him.” Philippine authorities commented on the meeting: “This member appears to be a central figure in the group.” Given that Abu al-Ful was a senior operative in Imad Mughniyeh’s IJO, it appears that somebody high up the Hezbollah hierarchy wanted to meet Pandu. But the meeting never materialized, for unspecified reasons.
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Amid his international travels, Pandu continued to be “instrumental in recruiting members of the Hezbollah Special Attack Apparatus in the Southeast Asian region, particularly in Indonesia and Malaysia,” according to Philippine investigators. In 1995, apparently while on another trip to the Malaysian-Singaporean border town of Johor Bahru, Pandu met a Malaysian man named Zainal who made a living selling homemade candies he and his wife prepared at home. It was Zainal’s “sturdy build” that led Pandu to recruit him for Hezbollah and bring him to meet Abu al-Ful (using the name Hisham) at a restaurant in Johor.
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Four years later, Pandu would admit that while he was not aware of the details of Zainal and Abu al-Ful’s relationship, he was “quite certain” that the two remained in direct contact.
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In fact, it appears this Zainal may be Zainal bin Talib, who underwent operational and intelligence training in Lebanon in 1997 and traveled to Israel undetected in 1999 and 2000 to collect operational intelligence.
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Zainal’s trips to Israel may have been tied to an unconfirmed Hezbollah plot involving Southeast Asian operatives to carry out an attack in Israel in 2000. Reportedly, one plan involved “an attack of the special attack apparatus in Jerusalem against Jewish targets by next year [2000] after the Hajj.”
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Using his well-worn Buenaventura passport, Pandu traveled from the Philippines to Dubai in 1996. “In between these monitored travels,” notes one report, “his whereabouts remained unknown and he might have made other trips using other passports.”
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By this time the Hezbollah network in the region had fully regrouped after the failed Bangkok bombing and was active on many fronts in multiple countries. New recruits were being brought in, logistical procurement networks were established, contact was maintained with associates abroad, and new plots were being planned. In 1996, for example, Mouhandes—an operative crucial in the Bangkok plot of
1994—was sent back to Thailand and elsewhere in the region “for the purpose of preparing the ‘Five Contingency Attacks.’” The opaque reference to a plan for five attacks appears to have been made by a detained Hezbollah operative and is not further explained. It does, however, fit an established Hezbollah modus operandi of casing targets and preparing off-the-shelf operations that can be delivered as ordered.
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As of 1997, Pandu had moved to Indonesia, where he intensified his recruitment activities, including visits to Syria and Lebanon via Dubai, ostensibly for business but actually to undergo further military training in Lebanon.
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That year’s visit to Lebanon was also aimed at securing training for some of his new recruits. According to investigators, in 1997 Pandu “helped in the recruitment of members of the Islamic Jihad, the special attack apparatus of the Hezbollah in Southeast Asia and went to Lebanon to assist in their subsequent training in Lebanon near Balbek.”
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Pandu later told investigators that Abu al-Ful personally picked him up at the Syrian-Lebanese border and drove him to an apartment in Beirut. He was surprised to find two other Southeast Asian recruits, Zainal and another Malaysian named Norman Basha, already there. The three spent a week learning the arts of surveillance, countersurveillance, and communicating in code. Norman’s training ended there, but Hezbollah operatives transferred Pandu and Zainal to engage in more military training at Hezbollah camps in the Bekaa Valley.
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Under interrogation Pandu reportedly also admitted to traveling to Iran, financed by Hezbollah, “where he stayed for almost a month supposedly for tourism.” For this trip he used a fake Pakistani passport he obtained in Malaysia.
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At least one other Southeast Asian Hezbollah recruit traveled to Iran that year: Salim Mesilam, a Filipino Shiite who had procured weapons for Hezbollah that were stored in Manila.
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Pandu had increased his recruitment efforts in response to a direct request from Abu al-Ful. Fearful of getting involved with political opposition groups that might arouse the ire of local authorities or unintentionally invite law enforcement scrutiny, Pandu proceeded carefully. Instead, he preferred to scope out potential recruits in mosques, not only in Indonesia but in Thailand and Malaysia as well. Pandu then met with the prospects “to check their suitability.” And not all candidates passed muster. Under questioning, Pandu listed several people in Jakarta, for example, whom he interviewed but did not invite to join Hezbollah or meet Abu al-Ful.
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