JAKARTA, Indonesia - Indonesia's most wanted terrorist was shot in the leg and captured during a weekend raid, police said Wednesday, accusing him of involvement in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings and other deadly attacks.
Abu Dujana, who allegedly leads Southeast Asian militant group Jemaah Islamiyah, is a skilled bomb-maker who trained in Afghanistan where he met Osama bin Laden, said police spokesman Sisno Adiwinoto.
The 37-year-old was captured Saturday with seven other suspected terrorists on Indonesia's main island of Java, but it took several days to positively identify him using dental and DNA samples.
"He was a key figure in the terrorist network in Indonesia," Adiwinoto said, adding that the arrest would significantly reduce the chances of future attacks in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
Security experts called the capture a major breakthrough, saying Dujana could provide crucial information about the inner workings of Jemaah Islamiyah -- but warned threats of bombings, kidnappings or assassination remained.
"It's going to be at least six months before they recover themselves," said John Harrison, of Singapore's International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research. Dujana's capture will be "disruptive" to the organization in the short- and mid-term, he said.
Jemaah Islamiyah has been blamed for the 2002 bombings on the resort island of Bali, the 2003 and 2004 attacks on the J.W. Marriott Hotel the Australian Embassy, and the 2005 triple suicide bombings on restaurants in Bali.
Together, the attacks killed more than 240 people, many of them Western tourists.
Anti-terror officers tracked Dujana as a result of information gleaned from suspects arrested in raids in March on Java where a massive haul of ammunition and bombs also was seized, Adiwinoto said.
Dujana and the other suspects were being held at an undisclosed location, he said. Under the country's anti-terror law, police can hold suspects for several weeks without charging them.
Jemaah Islamiyah, which police say received funds and direction from al-Qaida in the early 2000s, also has been blamed for attacks in the Philippines, while Malaysia and Singapore have arrested several dozen alleged operatives in recent years.
Adiwinoto said Dujana played a major role in "almost all" the bombings in Indonesia, including the first Bali attacks.
Sidney Jones, a leading Jemaah Islamiyah analyst, called the arrest "very significant."
"If he will talk, he will be able to give police absolutely rock solid data about everything there is to know about JI," Jones said.
Adiwinoto said Dujana's good Arabic language skills meant he forged close ties with al-Qaida commanders in Afghanistan in the late 1980s and 1990s and -- like scores of other militants -- personally met bin Laden.
Neighboring Australia, which lost 88 people in the Bali nightclub blasts, congratulated Indonesia on the arrest.
"It's a great achievement by the Indonesian authorities and I think they are doing an outstanding job in combating terrorism," Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told his country's parliament.
Analysts say scores of arrests and raids have weakened Jemaah Islamiyah and it is now split between hardcore members who want to carry on the bombing campaign and those who say attacking "soft" civilian targets hurts the group's aim of implementing an Islamic state in Indonesia.
Police say Dujana, who like most senior members of Jemaah Islamiyah fled to Malaysia in the 1990s to avoid a crackdown by former dictator Suharto, become head of Jemaah Islamiyah four years ago.
Abu Rusdan, the man police say Dujana replaced as head of the group, was arrested in 2003 and sentenced to 3 1/2 years in jail for hiding one of the militants convicted in the Bali blasts.
Indonesia has not made membership in Jemaah Islamiyah a criminal offense, but almost 200 people have been successfully prosecuted for terrorist offenses since 2002. Five have been sentenced to death, although none have yet been executed.
