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THE Singaporean hiding in the nest of terrorist bomb makers in Palembang is Mohamed Hassan Saynudin, 35.
Hassan, an Indian Muslim, has been teaching English in Palembang in South Sumatra, and also in other parts of Indonesia.
He was on the wanted list of Interpol, the international police organisation, since mid-2002, and was among 10 suspected militants arrested in Indonesia with a cache of bombs recently.
Hassan was among the group of terrorists who fled in December 2001 and was one of the four Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) fugitives involved with Mas Selamat Kastari in his plot to crash a plane into Changi Airport in January 2002.
He was later on the Philippines government's terror blacklist, along with Husaini Ismail, Mohamed Rashid Zainal Abidin and Ishak Mohamed Noohu - all members of JI, which is linked to the Al-Qaeda terror network.
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) had at that time said that Hassan and the others had not been in Singapore since December 2001.
Hassan is the brother of JI detainee Mohamed Hussain Saynudin who was arrested last year.
Hussain had left Singapore to pursue Arabic studies overseas in August 2001.
He later went for terrorist training conducted by the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba militant group in Pakistan.
Hussain's name popped up again as an accomplice in the 'militant jihad' plans of self-radicalised Singapore law graduate Abdul Basheer Abdul Kader.
Hassan is reportedly an expert bomb maker, according to Indonesian newspaper, Kompas, having been trained in Afghanistan.
He is said to go by a number of other names such as Abu Hazam, Alim, Omar and Taslim.
A large number of bombs were discovered in the attic of a Palembang house in the latest raid by Indonesian anti-terrorist teams.
Pinpointing the location of terrorists calls for relentless field work and close international cooperation between security agencies.
The Internal Security Department (ISD), which is part of the MHA, continuously shares intelligence on the JI network covering Indonesia, Malaysia, southern Philippines and Australia with security service counterparts in these countries.
Through ISD's intelligence-sharing on the likely locations of Singapore JI fugitives, 10 Singaporean JI members at large were hunted down and detained over the years.
Hassan is the latest fugitive to have been arrested as a result of such intelligence collaboration.
Antara News quoted an Indonesian police spokesman as saying that the police arrested Hassan based on information from Singapore that he was involved in terrorist activities.
Shared information has also helped foreign agencies to disrupt cells in their countries.
The MHA was instrumental in revealing publicly the secretive JI terror network and its links to the Al-Qaeda in 2001.
Before that, the militant organisation had operated largely below the radar.
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