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