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."