KUANTAN: “If we had sat down like this a few years ago and you decided to play me out, you would be five million (ringgit) richer,” he deadpanned.
Before us was a man who, not too long ago, was among the region’s most-wanted.
It took us a while before we finally tracked him down. After we agreed to the deal that there would be no mention of his name or any information that could affect the business he owned from the days he was running the Jemaah Islamiyah network that led to his incarceration under the Internal Security Act at the Kamunting detention camp, the tell-all began.
For a man who used a different pseudonym for every role he assumed under the JI banner, his given name means little to him. The name Zain Mazlan we agreed upon for this interview suited him just fine.
Unlike his former comrades, whose deeds were detailed in their dossiers and official anti-terror documents, those traced back to him remain sketchy.
The trail which Zain, known as one of JI’s top financiers left behind some years ago, had prompted the most shadowy of secret services to offer him a blank cheque. He had declared that he would take the personal insider information of black ops, missions and offensives, with him, to the grave.
This man found out that he had become enemy number one in the Global War on Terror under the administration of then United States president George W. Bush, when he found his name in the Specially Designated Global Terrorist list (also known as the Bush List, issued on Sept 9, 2003) for having allegedly “committed or pose a significant risk of committing acts of terrorism”, or “provide support, services, or assistance to, or otherwise associate with, terrorists and terrorist organisations designated under OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) Counter Terrorism Sanctions programmes”.
In our four-hour chat, there were many occasions where Zain would give a curt “can’t say” as a reply. This included where he was hiding before he decided to surrender to the federal police headquarters in Bukit Aman and how exactly he made his way back to Malaysian soil.
According to Zain, what prompted him to give up his way of life as he knew and made him decide to wage war in a foreign land?
“It was the atrocities against the Palestinians and Muslims in many parts of the world that I was seeing daily that ignited the fire in me.
“The spirit of jihadism in me will always be there for as long as these atrocities continue,” he said.
As names came up during the conversation, Zain would say, “Yes he was my brother. We shared the same passion in jihad”.
There was light in his eyes when the New Straits Times mentioned to him a story that the NST frontpaged just days before.
He recalled the days when Mohamad Farik Amin and Mohamed Nazir Lep, the two Malaysians currently serving time in prison at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba, were taking orders from him.
“They were my runners. I was crestfallen when they were picked up by the FBI.
“If it is true that they are looking at being released from that hell hole, I am the happiest person on earth.
“Perhaps I will give them a piece of my land for them to work on,” he said.
The persona of this father to many children, his presence, hearty laugh, calm, zen-like demeanour, is in stark contrast to his role in alleged terror activities that global police had wanted him for, including the 2002 Bali bombing.
Skilled in the black arts, Zain takes pride in being able to slip through the cracks, to blend in, to disappear. For this, he said he had his military training to thank.
He is particularly proud of the fact that a Google search on him would not reveal much. In fact, Zulkifli Hir, better known as Marwan, who had an RM5 million bounty on his head before he was killed in an ambush in January this year in the southern Philippines, had often been mistaken for Zain.
Some intelligence information that had been attributed to Marwan, may have in fact, been referring to Zain.