Saudi 'gave money' to JI for explosives, expert says
Saudi 'gave money' to JI for explosives, expert says
Reuters, Singapore
An unidentified Saudi supplied funds to the Indonesian-based Jemaah Islamiah network to buy explosives that may have been used in the Bali bombing, an authority on Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda said on Wednesday.
The information on the Saudi funding was gathered in U.S. interrogations of Omar al-Faruq, a Kuwaiti linked to al-Qaeda who was arrested in Indonesia last June and later handed over to U.S. authorities in Afghanistan, said Rohan Gunaratna, author of the book Inside Al-Qaeda: Global Network of Terror.
The money was sent to Jemaah Islamiah earlier this year, said Gunaratna, who has seen the U.S. interrogation papers. The amount sent by the Saudi donor was $74,000, the Financial Times said.
Gunaratna said the explosives were bought from Indonesian army officers who sold the material illegally.
In Bali, police chief Budi Setyawan would neither confirm nor deny a Washington Post story that a former member of the Indonesian Air Force had confessed to building the bombs that killed 181 people, mostly foreign travelers, on Saturday.
Asked about the story at a news conference, he said: "Later that information will be developed. I will give that to investigators."
Jemaah Islamiah, which has links to al-Qaeda, is a prime suspect behind the blasts in a strip of bars and clubs packed with foreign travelers on Bali's Kuta Beach on Saturday night.
Gunaratna said the explosives obtained from the military could have been used in the Bali bombings.
Initial indications have reportedly shown traces at the site of the military explosive C4, the same material used in the al- Qaeda-linked bombing of the USS Cole in the port of Aden in Yemen two years to the day before the Bali attack.
Gunaratna said the explosives bought by Jemaah Islamiah were shipped to the Indonesian island of Ambon, the site of numerous bloody attacks between Christians and Muslims in recent years, and divided among different Islamist groups.
In a sign militant Islamic groups may be on the defensive, the Laskar Jihad, a group whose fighters have battled Christians in the Maluku Islands -- of which Ambon is one of the largest -- said on Tuesday it had disbanded and would withdraw its combatants.