JI used donations to fund bombings: Report

JI used donations to fund bombings: Report

Associated Press, Kuala Lumpur

Southeast Asia's chief terrorist suspect collected hundreds of thousands of dollars through a front charity in Malaysia and used the funds for bombings and to send recruits for military training, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Riduan Isamuddin, known as Hambali, also received 95,000 ringgit (US$25,000) from suspected al-Qaeda leader Sheikh Mohamed, or Mokhtar, to run Jamaah Islamiyah (JI), a regional extremist network suspected in the Bali bombings and a series of other attacks in recent years, The Star newspaper reported.

U.S. officials have identified Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a Kuwaiti-Pakistani, as a mastermind of Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. It was not immediately clear if the two names belong to the same man.

Citing intelligence reports and police sources, The Star said Hambali amassed at least 2 million ringgit (US$526,000) to fund JI operations.

Some 800,000 ringgit ($200,000) came from donations to Pertubuhan al-Ehasan, a nongovernment organization Hambali ordered set up in Malaysia in 1998.

The organization, which solicited donations by promising to help suffering Muslims, was a JI front, officials cited by the paper said.

The money was used to buy weapons, send JI recruits to Afghanistan and the southern Philippines for military training and support the Christian-Muslim conflict in Ambon, Indonesia, the paper reported.

It was also used to finance the bombing of a train station in the Philippines capital, Manila, and a series of church bombings in Indonesia, the paper said.

The money was also used to buy four tons of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer that can be made into explosives and which investigators say was used in the Oct. 12 Bali bombings, which killed 192 people.

Hambali "collected money from unsuspecting people, not only in Malaysia, but all over the world," The Star quoted Malaysia's national police chief Norian Mai as saying.

Officials were not immediately available to comment on the report. But the details fit generally with what security officials have previously told The Associated Press about JI's operations in Malaysia.

Hambali, an Indonesian who was based in Malaysia for years until 2001, is believed to be JI's main contact with al-Qaeda. He is wanted in several Southeast Asian countries in connection to bomb plots, including a foiled plan to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Singapore, and for organizing a meeting of al-Qaeda operatives, including two Sept. 11 hijackers, in Malaysia in 2000.

Since mid-2001, predominantly Muslim Malaysia has arrested more than 70 religious militant suspects, including dozens of alleged members of JI.