Riduan Isamuddin,[a] also known by the nom de guerre Hambali (born April 4, 1964), is the former military leader of the Indonesian terrorist organization Jemaah Islamiyah (JI).

Hambali envisioned creating a Muslim state, in the form of an Islamic superpower (a theocracy) across Southeast Asia, with himself as its leader (Caliph).

Riduan Isamuddin was born Encep Nurjaman in the rice belt of Sukamanah, a small village in Cianjur Regency, in the province of West Java, Indonesia.

[10] His name has been transliterated into English text in several different ways over the years, including; In 1991, Nurjamin returned to Cianjur for one week, before going to Malaysia, where he met the two co-founders of JI, Abdullah Sungkar and Abubakar Bashir.

Nurjaman internationalized the terrorist group's activities and took on a new name in his permanent residence permit: Riduan Isamuddin.

Investigators say that many calls on those cell phones were made to Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Osama bin Laden's brother in law, who had arrived back in Manila, Philippines in 1991.

The company provided financial assistance to the project until it was discovered by investigators on a laptop computer after an apartment fire on January 6, 1995.

Both Shah and mastermind Ramzi Yousef, who escaped the Philippines but was arrested in Lahore, Pakistan, were extradited to the United States.

Meanwhile, the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiah, Abu Bakr Bashir, was preaching jihad at his schools while denying links to Islamic militants.

[citation needed] Hambali planned and attended the January 2000 Al Qaeda Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

[17][18] The twenty uniformed and undercover police smashed down the door to his one bedroom apartment in Ayutthaya, and arrested him and 33-year-old Noralwizah Lee Abdullah, a Chinese Malaysian who was considered to be his wife.

[19] On September 6, 2006, President George W. Bush confirmed that Hambali was being held by the CIA and revealed that he had been transferred to Guantanamo Bay.

[23][24][25][26][27] Those 14 include Hambali and an alleged lieutenant of his called Mohammed Nazir Bin Lep alias Lillie or Li-Li.

[23][24][25][26] Within days of his arrest, he was taken to an undisclosed secret detention facility where he was subject to "enhanced interrogation techniques" (EITs) inflicted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for approximately three years as part of the notorious Rendition, Detention and Interrogation (RDI) program, which is now commonly known as the "Torture Program."

This includes any person who commits a belligerent act or has directly supported hostilities in aid of enemy armed forces.

[32] A Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for the tribunal of each detainee, listing the allegations that supported their detention as an "enemy combatant".

Riduan Isamuddin's memo accused him of the following:[33] The Department of Defense announced on August 9, 2007 that all fourteen of the "high-value detainees" who had been transferred to Guantanamo from the CIA's black sites, had been officially classified as "enemy combatants".

[35][36] According to Xinhua, the state-owned newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, the Department of Justice was considering transferring Riduan Isamuddin to Washington, D.C. for a civilian trial.

When it reported back, a year later, the Joint Review Task Force classified some individuals as too dangerous to be transferred from Guantanamo, even though there was no evidence to justify laying charges against them.