Mat Top’s picture from the Interpol website.
While Southeast Asia’s feared militant was killed in a gunbattle with Indonesian police last September, the current Interpol website on the status of the Malaysian is baffling. Strangely, the man, who was better known as Mat Top, continues to haunt the mind – more than two months after his bloody end.
The Interpol website has Mat Top on its “Most Wanted List”! The master bomb-maker’s name and photograph continue to appear on the Interpol website’s ‘Red Corner’, along with 556 other international criminals still wanted by the global police.
But that’s not all. There is also an IP-UN Security Council Special Notice (Interpol-United Nations) against Mat Top, a notice for individuals or entities associated with terror outfits like the Al-Qaeda or Taliban. The notice imposes sanctions such as travel ban and freezing of assets.
The Malaysian had been on the run from Indonesian security dragnet after he was implicated in a series of horrific bomb blasts which rocked the country, since the devastating 2002 Bali bombings which left nearly 200 people dead.
On Sept 17, Mat Top, 41, was killed during a police raid in Solo Central Java. Three weeks later, he was buried at his village in Pontian, Johor.
The terrorist was alleged to have been associated with the Jemmah Islamiyah (JI), which had links with the militant Al-Qaeda group. Later, he went on to set up his own outfit, Tanzim Qaedat, another violent terror group.
Born in Johor and graduated from the University of Technology in his home state, Mat Top left Malaysia, along with several key JI leaders, to Indonesia, when the Malaysian Government clamped down on suspected Islamic militant groups in 2001.
He was alleged to have masterminded several bombings in Jakarta – the 2003 JW Marriott Hotel blast, the Australian embassy bombing, a year later, the second 2005 Bali bomb explosion, and the JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton blasts in July this year. – Bernama
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