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Those same crucial years saw Hambali's first brush with the big leagues of terrorism, a near-disastrous experience that appears to have reinforced his natural caution and secretiveness. In June 1994, the newly prosperous Hambali co-founded a company called Konsojaya, ostensibly to export palm oil from Malaysia to Afghanistan. His business partner in the venture was Wali Khan Amin Shah, a Pakistani later jailed in the U.S. for the bombing of a Philippine Airlines plane in December 1994 that killed a Japanese businessman. Prosecutors in the U.S. say the bombing was a dry run for much more ambitious scheme to detonate bombs on no fewer than 12 U.S. airliners over the Pacific. In the first clear indication of Hambali's direct links to Osama bin Laden, Philippine police phone taps showed that frequent calls were made from the Konsojaya offices in Malaysia to the Manila offices of Mohammed Khalifa, bin Laden's brother-in-law, who headed a charitable organization which was allegedly a conduit for al-Qaeda funds.

Wali Khan and another man, Ramzi Yousef—who was later convicted of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center—along with a third accomplice were convicted in 1996 by a New York court of responsibility for the plan to bomb the 12 airliners. After Wali Khan escaped from custody in Manila in early 1995, he fled to Malaysia, where Philippine investigators say Hambali was instrumental supplying cash and a cover as a restaurateur on the resort island of Langkawi, where he used the name Osama Turkestani. Wali Khan was arrested in December 1995 and handed over to U.S. officials after an alert Malaysian police officer noticed his chief distinguishing mark: three missing fingers on his left hand.

Philippine investigators say that, through Konsojaya, Hambali was a prime mover in the plot, which was code-named Bojinka, after the Serbo-Croatian word for explosion. "During that time Hambali was already performing a very significant role as far as the spread of militant Islam in the region is concerned," says Rodolfo Mendoza, the former head of the Philippine counterterrorism unit that conducted the Bojinka investigation.

Hambali's role in the Bojinka plot and his links to Osama's brother-in-law went unnoticed until earlier this year. But he learned important lessons from that failure, lying low for several years following Wali Khan's arrest. Hambali went back to the basics, preaching and fund raising, forging close links with Abubakar and Mohammed Iqbal, or Jibril, another Islamic scholar and preacher who moved into the Sungei Manggis compound. Malaysian police say that by the late 1990s, this triumvirate was at the heart of terrorist activity by Islamic radicals—in Malaysia and elsewhere in the region. (Jibril was arrested in Malaysia in June 2001 and accused of seeking the violent overthrow of the government to set up an Islamic republic. He is now in indefinite Malaysian police custody.) The three men preached to small groups across the country, gathering a core of about 30 disciples ranging from petty traders, artisans and factory workers to professionals, a district engineer, businessmen and university lecturers. Abubakar and Jibril took turns leading the sermons, focusing on the spiritual side of Islam. Hambali was often silent in the larger meetings, participants say, preferring to preach to smaller, hand-picked groups of disciples. Abubakar, who lived in one of those shacks in Sungei Manggis just a few yards away from Hambali's house, says his friend was no fiery orator, relying mostly on close personal contact in small groups. "It was only among his own group he was considered as a syekh," or great teacher, Abubakar says.

One member of that group was Mohammed Sobri, a former soldier in the Malaysian army who allowed his house just outside Kuala Lumpur to be used by Hambali, Bashir and Jibril as a frequent meeting place for prayers and discussion. Now 38, Sobri was greatly impressed by Hambali. "This may be because he had fought in Afghanistan and had met Osama. He talked about Palestine and Chechnya and Bosnia with a real firsthand information."

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