JAKARTA, 1 December 2004 — Two Malaysian militants held in Indonesia said yesterday that alleged former regional terror chief Abu Bakar Bashir never spoke of plans to attack Western interests during encounters with them.
Syamsul Bahri, testifying in Bashir’s terrorism trial, said he was told by another militant that Bashir had succeeded Abdullah Sungkar as the leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah group but was not aware of his inauguration.
“I’ve never heard of bombing plans from ustadz (teacher) or talk of that sort. There were only religious messages,” Bahri, a 37-year-old British-trained engineer, told the court.
Bahri said he met Bashir on three occasions — in Pakistan when he was studying Islam, in Malaysia and in Indonesia.
Bashir denied he met Bahri in Pakistan.
A Jakarta court jailed Bahri for three years in July for attending JI meetings last year to plan terror attacks in Indonesia.
Bashir, an Islamic cleric, is accused of inciting followers to carry out the October 2002 Bali nightclub bombings in which 202 people died and of plotting last year’s attack on the Jakarta Marriott Hotel in which 12 were killed.
If found guilty he could face a death sentence.
Another Malaysian testifying in the trial, Andi Saputra, said he met Bashir five times in Malaysia in the 1990s but said he only listened to the cleric’s religious sermons.
Asked if Bashir had spoken of attacking Westerners: “As far as I can remember, there was none.”
Saputra is awaiting trial for his role in the Marriott attack.
He yesterday admitted to receiving explosive materials, some of which was later used in the Marriott bombing.
The trial was adjourned until tomorrow.
Foreign governments say Bashir led the Al-Qaeda-linked JI, which is blamed for the Bali and Marriott blasts, for a suicide bombing outside the Australian Embassy in September and for a string of other attacks.
An Indonesian court last year cleared the cleric of leading the group, which seeks to create an Islamic fundamentalist state in Southeast Asia. But police say they have new evidence of his leadership role.
The cleric was arrested a week after the Bali blasts and has remained in detention ever since. Prosecutors have said in their indictment that he orchestrated the Marriott bombing from his cell.
Bashir has described the indictment as “legal fiction” and said he had nothing to gain from acts of terrorism since they would only fuel interference in Indonesia by Washington.
The relatives of the Indonesians killed in the Marriott bombing recounted tales of horror when the trial of Bashir resumed yesterday. They were the first batch of witnesses called in the trial.
Sri Lestari described how her husband, a Marriott Hotel security guard, suffered for more than a week in hospital before succumbing to the burns covering most of his body.
“For eight days, I saw him with a hose going into his mouth and I could not talk with him,” she said before breaking down in tears. Her testimony had to be cut short as she could only give brief answers between sobs.
The second witness in the trial, which began in October and is expected to drag well into next year, lost his brother-in-law, a taxi driver trying to park at the hotel when the bomb exploded.
“My brother was parking. His head was cut off and could not be found anywhere even until now. His legs were also gone. Only his arms were still intact,” Husni said.
The trial is seen as a test of new President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s commitment to stamping out terrorism in the world’s largest Muslim-populated country.
