Ba'asyir terrorists still an enigma

Ba'asyir terrorists still an enigma

Yogita Tahilramani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The lawyer of the Indonesian Mujahidin Council (MMI) chief Abu
Bakar Ba'asyir said on Thursday there was no evidence of a link
between his client and the al-Qaeda network.

The lawyer, Achmad Michdan, said that during his client's two
days of questioning last week the National Police officers cross-
checked reports from Malaysian authorities that showed that
Ba'asyir could have links with the Afghanistan-based organization
led by Osama bin Laden.

Achmad said the police focused their questions on how close he
was to an alleged al Qaeda-linked suspect, Muslim preacher Abu
Jibril, a native of Lombok in West Nusa Tenggara who was arrested
in Malaysia under the Internal Security Act last June for
allegedly conspiring to establish an Islamic state.

"Ustad Ba'asyir has met Ustad Jibril personally a few times...
both are known preachers. It doesn't mean they were working
together to form Daulah Islamiah (Islamic government)," Achmad
told The Jakarta Post.

"Ustad Ba'asyir also admires Osama bin Laden. But that does
not mean he works for the man."

Intelligence officers said Abu Jibril was the nickname of
Mohamad Iqbal A. Rahman.

Intelligence sources said on Thursday that detained members of
a militant wing of the Malaysian group Kumpulan Militan Malaysia
(KMM) and detained members of Jemaah Islamiah (JI) in Singapore,
kept strong links and also claimed to be headed by three
Indonesian leaders, identified as Ba'asyir alias Abdus Samad, Abu
Jibril and Hambali, alias Nurjaman Riduan Isamuddin.

The detained members had met and traveled between Singapore
and Malaysia quite often, to discuss among other things, the
forming of an Islamic state. The detained KMM members in Malaysia
also allegedly had links with Zacarias Moussaoui, a French
citizen who is the only person yet to be indicted in the United
States for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

"The Indonesian Police have received a lot of heat from the
Malaysian and Singaporean authorities ... not directly, but via
our government. This is why, the police needed to clarify certain
issues about Ba'asyir," an intelligence officer told The Jakarta
Post on Thursday.

The police, he said, have not found any evidence of the
reports and were uncertain whether they would summon Ba'asyir for
another round of questioning.

Ba'asyir was detained last December along with 13 members of
KMM by Malaysian authorities, but was released due to lack of
evidence.

The Muslim cleric is running an Islamic boarding school in
Sukoharjo in Central Java.

Another source told the Post that the names of Ba'asyir and
Hambali had also been linked to one of the detained Malaysians,
identified as Yazid Sufa'at.

The source said that Yazid, a businessman, had been singled
out as an agent of bin Laden who had helped in running and
developing a terrorist network in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore
and the Philippines.

Yazid, 37, was arrested by Malaysian authorities in Kedah on
Dec. 9 last year.

"The news we received here was that Osama had also (allegedly)
commanded Yazid via an Indonesian preacher, to meet with two
Saudi Arabian men ... Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mirdha, the
men who (reportedly) crashed a plane into the Pentagon in the
Sept. 11 attacks," the officer said.

"Whether the preacher is Ba'asyir, or Hambali or Iqbal or
whoever ... we still need to make absolutely sure. For that, we
need to gather more evidence."

Yazid also allegedly met up with Zacarias in Malaysia in
September 2000 and had allegedly paid Zacarias "large sums of
money" to carry out terrorist activities.

A group of Indonesian attorneys known as the Muslim Defense
Team (TPM) announced plans on Monday to sue the Philippine and
Malaysian governments for creating the impression that Indonesia
is a hub for terrorists, and for naming Ba'asyir as a member of
the al-Qaeda terrorist network.