Malaysian terror suspects confess

Malaysian terror suspects confess

MALAYSIA: Four repentant Malaysians have admitted to being members of the Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) terror group and apologized for their roles in deadly bomb attacks in Indonesia, saying they were following a fatwa, or religious edict, from Osama bin Laden which was "the wrong path".

The four -- currently awaiting trial in Indonesia -- made their confessions to a TV station for a documentary that will be screened in Malaysia on Friday night.

A transcript of TV3's one-hour special, titled Confession of JI Members, was released to the media on Friday.

In his confession, Mohamad Nasir Abbas said the fatwa calling for "revenge on the Americans" was passed to regional terror suspect Hambali and alleged JI leader Abu Bakar Ba'asyir.

The fatwa meant "we can act by killing American civilians anywhere ... irrespective of women, elderly or children", said Nasir, who is the brother-in-law of Mukhlas, one of the men behind the 2002 Bali bombings.

Indonesian-born Hambali, now in U.S. custody, is the alleged operations chief of JI, the Southeast Asian network linked to al- Qaeda and blamed for the Bali bombings in 2002 which killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists.

JI seeks the establishment of a pan-Islamic state encompassing Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the southern Philippines and southern Thailand. -- Reuters