Umar Patek had a $1 million bounty on his head when authorities caught up with him Jan 25 in Abbottabad, the same town where Osama bin Laden was killed in a US commando attack four months later.
Indonesia’s anti-terrorism chief Ansyaad Mbai said it did not appear to be a coincidence that they were in the same place.
“It’s further evidence of the link between the Southeast Asian terror network and al-Qaeda,” he added, hours before the 41-year-old boarded an Indonesian plane sent to a Pakistani air force base.
Patek touched down outside Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, on Thursday morning and was taken straight to a police detention center in the West Java town of Kelapa Dua.
Published 11 August 2011, 17:26 IST