Posted on 11/08/2002 8:22:55 AM PST by dead
The suspect who has allegedly admitted taking part in the Bali bombings has told police he wanted to kill as many Americans as possible and "wasn't happy" that Australians died.
Indonesian authorities also said yesterday that the 40-year-old Indonesian man, Amrozi, had led police to a house in Bali where explosives residue was recovered.
Police say Amrozi has confessed to links with the Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, alleged spiritual head of the outlawed terror group Jemaah Islamiah, and the man regarded as al-Qaeda's number three, Hambali.
As questioning of Amrozi continued, the first substantial evidence emerged linking the Bali attack to a web of Islamic extremists across South-East Asia and accused of al-Qaeda connections.
The New York Times quoted Bali investigators as saying they were looking at the possibility that the attack was planned at a meeting in southern Thailand in January attended by al-Qaeda operatives and other Islamic extremists.
Hambali and an alleged al-Qaeda explosives expert, Mohamed Mansour Jabara, now in custody in the United States, were said to have attended the meeting.
Jabara has also been accused of being a key figure in last year's plot to attack Western targets, including the Australian high commission in Singapore.
The Australian Federal Police general manager of national operations, Ben McDevitt, said of Amrozi's arrest: "It quite possibly is the most significant development at this stage ... we think this will change the momentum of this inquiry."
The chief of the Indonesian police investigation team, Major General I Made Mangku Pastika, said Amrozi had said he wanted to kill as many Americans as possible. He said "they were not very happy because Australians were killed", instead of Americans.
General Pastika said a search of the Bali house had also turned up two one-way tickets to the city of Manado, on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. A bomb exploded outside the Philippine consulate in Manado the same day as the Bali blast.
The general suggested that Amrozi and an accomplice might have been planning to flee to the southern Philippines, home to Muslim extremist groups such as Abu Sayyaf and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
He said police believed six to 10 people were involved in the Kuta attack and that there were signs of international involvement. "We have their names already. We know their identities. What the police are doing now is searching throughout the country."
Indonesian police have labelled Amrozi - arrested at an Islamic boarding school in his home town of Tenggulun, in East Java, on Tuesday - as "executor" of the Bali bombing. They confirmed that he owned the L300 Mitsubishi van that exploded outside the Sari Club.
It is believed Amrozi was depicted in one of the three images police released last week, but had twice cut his hair since the bombing, said the national police spokesman, Brigadier-General Edward Aritonang.
Amrozi had told police he was born in 1962 and had travelled several times to Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, looking for work.
He had admitted living with Abu Bakar in Malaysia in the late 1990s when the cleric was in exile from the Soeharto regime. Local media reported that the two were in business selling perfume and had conducted religious meetings at mosques.
General Aritonang said police believed the bomb was put together in Bali, although they had not yet confirmed that Amrozi was on the island at the time of the blast.
For more information on Hambali, check out:
The international news network CNN reported yesterday that al-Qaeda had used a website to claim responsibility for the Bali attacks.
The site described the Indonesian operation as a "wonderful icon that is full of meanings" and described "Muslims of the East" as a "human strategic reserve" for Islam.
"The population of the Muslim world is 1.3 billion (300 million of them Arabs). The Muslims' human reserve is their brothers in Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India. The nation must not forget these Muslim brothers and must inculcate them with jihadi culture," the site says.
The message from al-Qaeda appeared on a website that the group had previously used to communicate with supporters in Arabic, said Henry Schuster, a CNN producer.
The site says al-Qaeda targeted "nightclubs and whorehouses in Indonesia" as part of the next stage in its campaign against the West, and the attacks on Bali were a "a conscientious and natural response" to the repression of the nation of Islam.
It also gives credit to al-Qaeda for an attack on a plane in Saudi Arabia, bombing a synagogue in Tunisia, destroying two ships in Yemen and attacking military bases in Kuwait.
The message on the site says a "marathon" had been prepared for United States security services and the media. "They have been gasping for breath, having run in one week from Mukalla in Yemen [French oil tanker attacked in October], to Faylaka in Kuwait [US marines attacked in October], to Bali in Indonesia."
CNN provided the Herald with an English translation of the relevant material, which it said one expert had translated and a second had checked.
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