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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.78 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.79
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.80
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.81 By one account it was Pandu who first spotted Herman and introduced him to Abu al-Ful.82 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.83 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.
Abu al-Ful’s Networks Regroup
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.”84
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.”85
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.86
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.87
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.88 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.89 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.”90
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.”91
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.92
Southeast Asia as a Recruitment and Logistics Hub
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.93 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.”94
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, a
lready 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.95
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.96 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.97
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.98
Nor was Abu al-Ful averse to recruiting non-Shi’a Muslims, despite Hezbollah’s explicit Shi’a self-identification. While preferring Shi’a recruits, an Israeli report concluded, “Hizballah does not hesitate to recruit activists from among Sunni populations as well, despite the differences between the two Muslim religious groups—the Shiite and the Sunni. This was especially prominent in Southeast Asia, where the spotting pool is mostly Sunni and Hizballah’s Islamic Jihad apparatus operated there very intensively.”99
In tandem with their recruitment efforts, Abu al-Ful’s Southeast Asian networks developed into a logistics hub with particular expertise in the procurement of forged and altered travel documents. The importance of such documents for a group like Hezbollah cannot be overstated. In Pandu’s case, he confessed under questioning to “using different passports whenever he carried out different missions for the Hezbollah Special Attack Apparatus.” By the time of his arrest in 1999, Pandu conceded, he had used Indonesian, Malaysian, Nigerian, Pakistani, and Philippine passports.100
In 1999, Pandu and Abu al-Ful traveled to Zamboanga City, Mindanao, to procure passports, but their “usual contact,” Philip, was out of the country.101 In his absence they turned to Talib Tanjil, another of Pandu’s sources for false documents, who agreed to provide the necessary passports.102 Tanjil too was more of a collaborator than a member of the Hezbollah network, but he was certainly sympathetic to its mission. In the 1990s, Tanjil reportedly went to Iran “to study Islam and its dissemination,” and later he accepted tasks from Abu al-Ful such as spotting recruits and procuring weapons, above and beyond his standard services procuring passports for the group.103
Tanjil provided Pandu with at least five passports on that visit and was in the process of procuring six more at the time of Pandu’s November 1999 arrest. Philippine police seized the five passports on Pandu’s person that Tanjil had already provided. But signs suggest Tanjil did not approach his work with optimal stealth, involving both his wife and his girlfriend in his passport procurement business. According to Pandu, payment for the eleven passports was to be sent to Tanjil’s wife’s bank account. And yet at one point that same year, “Tanjil tried to procure three passports with the help of his girlfriend, Arlene ‘Popsy’ Abuda.” That effort failed, however, after authorities detected “irregularities” in the applications, such as multiple birth certificates with the same serial numbers and documents that had clearly been subject to tampering. These included true data and photographs for the intended recipients, but with fictitious names. One of these flagged applications was for a passport bearing the name Diosdado Castro Galvez with the picture and identifying information for Zainal bin Talib, the Malaysian Hezbollah operative, who later did travel to Israel undetected in 1999 and 2000.104
In other cases, instead of applying for authentic passports for false identities, Tanjil would buy passports for 2,500 Philippine pesos (about $50) each from anybody willing to sell their authentic passport.105 Other procurement agents worked with Tanjil to obtain false documents, such as Zainal Abedin Tan, a Chinese convert to Islam living in the Philippines who drove a three-wheeled cab for a living but moonlighted in the passport business and even helped procure weapons for the Hezbollah network in 1992.106 Weapons procurement and storage was an ongoing theme in Hezbollah’s Southeast Asian network. Philippine authorities recovered a variety of weapons and ammunition stored in Manila in 1999. And an assortment of people were enlisted to procure these weapons, including Tanjil’s brother-in-law, Salim Mesilam.107
Renewed Operational Tempo
By 1997, Abu al-Ful’s networks were itching to attempt another round of attacks against Israeli, American, and Jewish targets in the region. While Pandu, Zainal bin Talib, Norman Basha, and Salim Mesilam traveled to Lebanon and Iran for various types of training, Abu al-Ful and several of his key lieutenants oversaw operations, primarily from Indonesia and Malaysia. According to investigators, these lieutenants included someone referred to as Haj Zein as well as two key players in the 1994 Bangkok plot: Ibrahim and Osama.
According to Israeli sources, Osama, a Lebanese member of Hezbollah, worked closely with Abu al-Ful to build a network of operatives in Southeast Asia and carry out operations there. He traveled to Indonesia and Malaysia with Abu al-Ful to meet with local recruits and participated in casing potential targets in Indonesia and Singapore.108 He also helped develop Pandu into a trained and trusted Hezbollah operative. In a sign of the increasingly significant role Pandu played for Hezbollah in Asia, when Pandu was in Lebanon in 1997 Osama provided him contact numbers for other members of Hezbollah’s terrorist wing, which Pandu entered into his address book in code.109 Upon examination, investigators found that Pandu’s address book contained several numbers of particular interest. One was a “trunk line” provided only to members of Hezbollah’s terrorist wing through which they could be connected to one another. This line, investigators noted, “has been associated to the Hezbollah special attack apparatus.”110 Other telephone numbers of interest included those of Iranian MOIS operatives in Malaysia and several of Pandu’s Hezbollah recruits.111
Ibrahim, the other aide who accompanied Abu al-Ful to the region, maintained direct communication with Imad Mughniyeh. According to one report, Ibrahim “was with Abu Ful and Haj Zein in the Far East in 1997. There are traces of calls he made to Immad Mughaniya.”112
Perhaps as part of the planning for Hezbollah’s “Five Contingency Attacks,” and leading up to a series of operations planned for 1998, Abu al-Ful’s network accelerated its operational tempo in summer 1997. In June of that year, Abu al-Ful acquired a new Brazilian passport issued in Beirut under the name Mahmud Idris Charafeddine, which he would soon use for operational travel to the Philippines.113 The following month Pandu’s contact in Iranian intelligence, MOIS agent Hidri, traveled to Manila from his station in Kuala Lumpur. It was his second trip to the Philippines in six months and fit an established modus operandi of MOIS support to Hezbollah operatives.114
In retrospect, investigators would recognize the increased activity as preoperational preparations for a surge in attacks. In Singapore, Ustaz Bandei was joined by several other Hezbollah operatives, including Abu al-Ful, who collected intelligence for a maritime bombing plot targeting US Navy and Israeli merchant ships either docking in Singapore or sailing through the Malacca Straits. According to Singaporean officials, “Ustaz Bandei and three other Hezbollah operatives continued to be active in 1998.” “The plan,” investigators in Singapore determined, “was to use a small boat packed with explosives and ram it into the target vessel.”115
Dissatisfied with their rudimentary surveillance in 1995, when they videotaped Singapore’s coastline from a restaurant across the Johor Strait in Malaysia,
they now actively searched for a site from which they could launch their attacks. To this end, they took a boat from Johor Bahru, Malaysia, just across the Johor Strait from Singapore, along the coastline and across the Singapore Strait to the Malaysian island of Batam.116 One island in particular off the coast of Singapore was deemed an especially promising launching point for their explosives-laden skiffs.117 One of the operatives involved in this plot may have been Zainal bin Talib, the Malaysian who trained in Lebanon with Pandu and who also conducted preoperational surveillance of a synagogue in Singapore around this time.118 More interesting is that according to Israeli intelligence, Abu al-Ful and his lieutenant Osama both participated in this surveillance operation.119
Nothing came of the surveillance of the synagogue, possibly because the network was exposed in 1999 or perhaps because circumstances never demanded that the contingency planning be acted upon. Pandu did, in fact, share the plot with his interrogators. According to one report dated December 1999, Pandu “revealed the Hezbollah’s intention to attack Israeli/Jewish targets in Singapore. To this end, operational intelligence was collected about the local synagogue and this assignment was levied on one of the Malaysian recruits in the past year.”120 Singaporean officials took the threat very seriously, however, and developed contingency planning of their own to thwart maritime terror attacks. In 2004, officials from the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore met ahead of a joint military exercise aimed at combating “non-conventional security threats to the maritime environment.”121
Meanwhile, Pandu’s network remained active. Pandu made his first trip to the Philippines to procure passports for members of his network in late 1998 using a Malaysian passport. In August 1999, he returned, this time using an Indonesian passport, though he traveled frequently in his pursuit of “clean” passports, including stops in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore.122