Australia will be destroyed instantly: Ba'asyir
Australia will be destroyed instantly: Ba'asyir
Agence France-Presse, Sydney, Australia
Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, head of the outlawed terror group Jamaah Islamiyah (JI), has warned that Australia will be "destroyed instantly" if it attacks terrorist targets overseas, it was reported on Friday.
The Sydney Morning Herald said Ba'asyir, 64, issued the warning in answers to questions the paper put to him this week through an intermediary in the Jakarta police hospital where he is being held.
The radical Islamic cleric said Australians would be dragged into a war with Muslims if they went along with the "crazy idea" of a pre-emptive strike floated by Prime Minister John Howard last week.
"So if John Howard's stance is followed by the people of Australia you must know that there will be war in the world and God willing, Australia will be destroyed instantly due to the crazy idea of its prime minister," he reportedly said.
Ba'asyir was reported separately by The Australian newspaper to have attended a February meeting in Bangkok with five key leaders of JI at which Bali was nominated as a terrorist target.
The report, citing information obtained in police interrogations of terrorist suspects in Malaysia and Indonesia, said it was the first direct link between Ba'asyir and the Bali bombings.
The reports follow a furious backlash by Southeast Asian countries to Howard's declaration last week that he would order pre-emptive strikes against suspected terrorists in neighboring countries as a last resort.
Ba'asyir told the Herald: "Australian people, God willing, have no problem with Islam", but their leaders, like Howard, "do influence their people a lot to make enemies of Islam."
He described Howard as the ally of George W. Bush, "the worst and most evil president in the world."
Ba'asyir, head of a militant Islamic boarding school in Central Java, was said to have backed the use of suicide bombers in defense of Islam, saying: "Martyrs' bombs are a noble thing, a jihad of high value if you are forced to do it.
"For instance in Palestine there is no other way to defend yourself and defend Islam.
"All Ulamas (Muslim leaders) agree with martyrs' bombs because we are forced to do it. There is no other way to defend ourselves and to defend Islam."
Ba'asyir was arrested by Indonesian police on Oct. 20 as a suspect in series of church bombings on Christmas Eve, 2000, and a plot to kill Megawati Soekarnoputri before she became Indonesia's president.
JI, the regional terrorist network of which he is the spiritual mentor, has been blamed for the Bali bombings which claimed some 190 lives, 88 of them Australian. Ba'asyir has denied any connection to the atrocity.
The Australian newspaper said Ba'asyir attended the Bangkok meeting with Malaysian JI leaders Nordin Mohammad Top and Wan Min Wan Mat, the alleged Bali bagman, Riduan Isamuddin, alias Hambali, JI's operational planner and Mukhlas, who is accused of selecting the targets.
A sixth unidentified man also attended the meeting.
Discovery of the Bangkok meeting was said to have been revealed in police questioning of Mukhlas, who was arrested in Java on December 3, and Wan Min, captured in Malaysia on Sept. 27.
In response to the reports on Friday, Howard said Australia bears "no ill will or malice toward any Muslim country or to Islam.
"We have not and will not behave with any belligerence towards any countries in our neighborhood or indeed towards any Islamic countries."