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Ba'asyir 'contacted by bin Laden'

Militant says al Qaeda invited cleric to Afghanistan

Thursday, December 2, 2004 Posted: 3:09 AM EST (0809 GMT)

JAKARTA, Indonesia (Reuters) -- Fugitive al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden once invited Indonesian preacher Abu Bakar Ba'asyir to live in Afghanistan, a young militant jailed over the bombing of a Jakarta hotel has told the cleric's terrorism trial.

Witness Mohamad Rais said on Thursday he gave a message to Ba'asyir from bin Laden in 2001 after returning to Indonesia from two years of military training in Afghan militant camps.

"If Ba'asyir feels no longer comfortable here (in Indonesia), Osama asked Ba'asyir to go there," Rais told the court when asked by a judge what was the content of the message.

Asked what Ba'asyir said, Rais replied: "God Willing."

Rais said he was given the message by Hambali, another Indonesian preacher who was believed to be bin Laden's key link to Southeast Asia.

Hambali was arrested in 2003 in Thailand and is in U.S. custody.

Ba'asyir, 66, is on trial over charges he leads Jemaah Islamiyah, a shadowy group seen as the regional arm of al Qaeda.

He is also accused of using "religious charisma" to incite attacks, including the suicide bombing of Jakarta's JW Marriott Hotel in 2003 that killed 12 people, and nightclub bombings in Bali in 2002 that left 202 dead, mostly foreign tourists.

Both attacks were blamed on Jemaah Islamiyah.

Rais, who is in his late 20s, said bin Laden had also sent his regards to Ba'asyir in the message. Rais is serving seven years jail for involvement in the Marriott strike.

Ba'asyir has consistently denied links to terrorism and insists Jemaah Islamiyah does not exist, although has called bin Laden a true Islamic warrior.

Prosecutors have said Ba'asyir ordered JI members to spread statements from bin Laden calling for war against Americans.

An earlier witness, Yudi Lukito, also known as Ismail Abdurrahman, told the trial the cleric once gave a speech at a training camp run by Islamic rebels in the southern Philippines.

Lukito said Ba'asyir spoke about the need for Muslim solidarity at the camp run by rebels of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) on Mindanao island in mid-2000.

A third witness said Ba'asyir was the head of Jemaah Islamiyah. Bambang Tetuko, a college lecturer and self-confessed JI member, said he reached this conclusion after comments Ba'asyir made in 2000 at a meeting in the Indonesian city of Bogor.

Allowed to speak, Ba'asyir denied being at such a meeting.

MILF training camp

Lukito, who is serving time for weapons offences, said he was undergoing military training at the MILF camp when Ba'asyir came.

"In one ceremony, he made the closing speech, which was about brotherhood among Muslims and the need to help each other. He was not the commander there. He came as a guest," Lukito told the court as Ba'asyir sat impassively with his lawyers.

Security analysts say there is overwhelming evidence the MILF has sheltered and shared training with Jemaah Islamiyah members at its camps in Mindanao, but add it is unclear whether the MILF leadership continues to sanction the links.

Prosecutors have said Ba'asyir visited a Jemaah Islamiyah camp in the Philippines in 2000, where he gave speech that incited JI members to carry out the Marriott attack three years later.

Tetuko was detained last year on suspicion of illegal activity but released because of insufficient evidence. He teaches civil engineering at a college in Semarang and said he was still JI's Central Java treasurer.

Neither prosecutors nor the judges asked him about the role he played in the network.

Ba'asyir served 18 months for immigration violations but was re-arrested using anti-terror statutes in April.

His trial began in October and is expected to drag on into next year.

He had earlier been arrested shortly after bombs ripped through two Bali bars in 2002 but courts later ruled charges brought under the criminal code over his leadership of Jemaah Islamiyah and links to previous violence were unproven.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/12/02/indonesia.bashir.reut/index.html

"from the archives . . ."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/263corhl.asp

Al Qaeda's Nightmare Scenario Emerges
Does Osama bin Laden plan to become the ultimate suicide bomber?
by Mansoor Ijaz
02/19/2003 12:00:00 AM (snipped)

Pyongyang--with a lot of help from China (which is supplying key chemicals to separate plutonium from depleted uranium) and Pakistan (which gave North Korea its uranium enrichment centrifuges and tutored its nuclear scientists)--will be able to churn out Coke cans of plutonium at the rate of one per week by the end of March.

According to my intelligence sources in the Far East, the outlying renegade provinces of Indonesia (Aceh, for example) and the Philippines (where al Qaeda affiliate Abu Sayyaf rules) are infested with senior al Qaeda leaders. Each one is financially empowered to purchase North Korea's plutonium the moment it is reprocessed. Ayman Zawahiri, al Qaeda's number two, was reportedly in Indonesia last September, a month before the Bali bomb blast that killed 200 mostly Australian tourists. He could easily be there again. We also know from published--and so far undisputed--reports that from February 2000 until July 2002, eight senior Pakistani nuclear scientists left their country without obtaining the required No Objection Certificates needed for travel abroad. They remain unaccounted for and at least some are reported to have traveled to Australia and Indonesia. In a worst case scenario, al Qaeda could construct a crude but effective nuclear device in weeks, if not a month, from Hezbollah C4, North Korean plutonium, and a little nuclear expertise from disaffected Pakistani scientists.

http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20041119-082558-5631r.htm

UPI NewsTrack TopNews
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N.Korea suspected of supplying terrorists

SEOUL, Nov. 19 (UPI) -- The chief of U.S. forces in South Korea said Friday he is concerned that North Korea may sell its weapons-grade plutonium to international terrorists."An additional concern the international community shares is that North Korea, in its desire for hard currency, would sell weapons-grade plutonium to some terrorist organizations," Gen. Leon J. LaPorte told a forum in Seoul. "And that would be disastrous to the world."The CIA estimates that North Korea already has developed one or two atomic bombs and has enough weapons-grade plutonium to make several more. Weapons sales are a major source of revenue for the cash-strapped North, South Korean defense officials have said."Clearly, they have an opportunity to harvest plutonium from the enrichment rods," LaPorte said. "North Korea is a known proliferator of missiles, missile technology and other military hardware."The United States reportedly has designated an overseas transfer of nuclear materials by North Korea as a "red line" that could warrant the use of force.

http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20041124-114539-1509r.htm

CIA confirms N. Korea nuclear test threat (snip)

Washington, DC, Nov. 24 (UPI) -- The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has confirmed North Korea threatened to test its long-range nuclear weapons, the Kyodo news agency said Wednesday.

The unclassified portion of the semiannual report to Congress identifies a full range of countries and groups of proliferation concerns, including China, Iran and the al-Qaida network.

"In late April 2003 during trilateral talks in Beijing, North Korea privately threatened to 'transfer' or 'demonstrate' its nuclear weapons," the report said.