CIA bomb used in Bali: Bashir

Sydney Morning Herald August 30, 2006

The Indonesian Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir has claimed that the CIA was involved in the 2002 Bali bombings.

Bashir, who was convicted and jailed for having prior knowledge of the attacks which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, was released from prison in June after serving nearly two years.

On ABC TV's Foreign Correspondent last night, Bashir said the device that killed most people in the attack was a CIA "micro-nuclear" bomb.

"So the bomb that killed so many Australians, it was an American bomb. It wasn't the bomb made by Amrozi and his friends," he said. Amrozi, Ali Ghufron and Imam Samudra are awaiting execution for their part in the plot

Police 'had role in' Bali blasts

October 12, 2005 The Australian

INDONESIAN police or military officers may have played a role in the 2002 Bali bombing, the country's former president, Abdurrahman Wahid has said.

Comment: To understand the Indonesian connection we need to look at the major terror attacks that have occured there. It began in 2002 with the now infamous Bali nightclub bombing where over 200 people (mostly foreigners) were murdered and hundreds more injured. This was followed in 2003 by a car bombing at the Marriott Hotel in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta where 13 were killed and 149 injured and finally in September 2004 when another car bomb exploded outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta killing 9 and wounding 180.

Bashir was intially arrested in 2002 for his alleged role in the Bali bombings and for being the leader of the "shadowy terror group" said to be responsible for the bombings, 'Jemaah Islamiah'. Owing to a lack of evidence against him however, he was finally convicted on immigration charges.

When the subsequent bombings occurred, authorities sought to get value for money from Bashir and silence him for good by linking him to the Hotel and Embassy bombings also. Little evidence was forthcoming however and Bashir ended up serving just two years and was released in June this year.

Strangely enough, there is more than enough evidence, all of it carried at one time or another by the mainstream press, to close the book on Islamic terrorism in Indonesia and conclude, more or less definitively, that the terrorists are working for the terrible trio aka the American, Israeli and British governments.

Take a gander at the following articles with commentary and then talk to us about the "reality" of Islamic terrorism:

Police 'had role in' Bali blasts

October 12, 2005
The Australian

INDONESIAN police or military officers may have played a role in the 2002 Bali bombing, the country's former president, Abdurrahman Wahid has said.

In an interview with SBS's Dateline program to be aired tonight, on the third anniversary of the bombing that killed 202 people, Mr Wahid says he has grave concerns about links between Indonesian authorities and terrorist groups.

While he believed terrorists were involved in planting one of the Kuta night club bombs, the second, which destroyed Bali's Sari Club, had been organised by authorities.

Asked who he thought planted the second bomb, Mr Wahid said: "Maybe the police ... or the armed forces."

"The orders to do this or that came from within our armed forces, not from the fundamentalist people," he says.

The program also claims a key figure behind the formation of terror group Jemaah Islamiah was an Indonesian spy.

Former terrorist Umar Abduh, who is now a researcher and writer, told Dateline Indonesian authorities had a hand in many terror groups.

"There is not a single Islamic group either in the movement or the political groups that is not controlled by (Indonesian) intelligence," he said.

Abduh has written a book on Teungku Fauzi Hasbi, a key figure in Jemaah Islamiah (JI) who had close contact with JI operations chief Hambali and lived next door to Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir.

He says Hasbi was a secret agent for Indonesia's military intelligence while at the same time a key player in creating JI.

Documents cited by SBS showed the Indonesian chief of military intelligence in 1990 authorised Hasbi to undertake a "special job".

A 1995 internal memo from the military intelligence headquarters in Jakarta included a request to use "Brother Fauzi Hasbi" to spy on Acehnese separatists in Indonesia, Malaysia and Sweden.

And a 2002 document assigned Hasbi the job of special agent for BIN, the Indonesian national intelligence agency.

Security analyst John Mempi told SBS that Hasbi, who was also known as Abu Jihad, had played a key role in JI in its early years.

"The first Jemaah Islamiah congress in Bogor was facilitated by Abu Jihad, after Abu Bakar Bashir returned from Malaysia," Mr Mempi said.

"We can see that Abu Jihad played an important role. He was later found to be an intelligence agent. So an intelligence agent has been facilitating the radical Islamic movement."

Hasbi was disembowelled in a mysterious murder in 2003 after he was exposed as a military agent and his son Lamkaruna Putra died in a plane crash last month.

Another convicted terrorist, Timsar Zubil, who set off three bombs in Sumatra in 1978, told the program intelligence agents had given his group a provocative name - Komando Jihad - and encouraged members to commit illegal acts.

"We may have deliberately been allowed to grow," he said.

Abduh also told the program his terrorist organisation, the Imron Movement, was incited to a range of violent action in the 1980s when the Indonesian military told the group that the assassination of several Muslim clerics was imminent.

Another terrorism expert, George Aditjondro, said a bombing in May this year that killed 23 people in the Christian village of Tentena, in central Sulawesi, had been organised by senior military and police officers.

"This is a strategy of depopulating an area and when an area has been depopulated - both becoming refugees or becoming paramilitary fighters - then that is the time when they can invest their money in major resource exploitation there," he said.

Flashback: Claims military involved in Jakarta blast

08/08/2003 12:50:39
ABC Radio Australia News

An advisor to the Indonesian government claims the armed forces may have been involved in the recent car bomb attack on the Marriott Hotel in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. A car bomb killed at least 10 people and injured scores more at the luxury hotel.

The advisor, Jawanda, has told our South East Asia correspondent Peter Lloyd that attempts to blame Muslim extremists for the suicide bombing may be premature.

He says Indonesia's naval intelligence has launched an informal investigation into the possibility the attack may have been part of a campaign to undermine the president, Megawati Sukarnoputri.

"That is already in the works," he said. When asked if there are people who want to undermine President Megawati, Jawanda said yes. "Undermine, but at the same time to make a path for them taking the power, so, creating the political tension," he said.

Comment: The Marriott Hotel attack was an operation straight out of the CIA's "how to overthrow a government" manual. Perhaps the Indonesian president had not been "playing ball" with the US interests in the region, and this was a shot across the bow to either get in line or have the forces of "the land of the free" come and show the Indonesian government and people what democracy is all about. More likely however is that the CIA was merely providing the Indonesian government with fuel for their "fight against terrorism" and also providing further evidence to the world that "Islamic terrorism" is real. At the time, the Indonesian police said that the bombing in Jakarta bore several similarities to the Bali attack in October 2002 which killed 202 people, which means that it wasn't a "terrorist attack"

Of course, when waging a phony terror war, not only do you have to carry out the terror attacks, but you have to groom the Islamic fundamentalists on whom the blame must fall. In the case of Indonesian Islamic terror, alleged terror group chief Abu Bakar Bashir was the CIA's and Mossad's point man. In this case however, it appears they made a bad choice...

Flashback: CIA behind Jakarta, Bali blasts, alleged Islamic militant leader says

Tuesday August 12, 1:38 PM
Yahoo News

Indonesian prosecutors were due later to recommend a sentence for alleged terror group chief Abu Bakar Bashir, as the Muslim cleric accused US intelligence of carrying out deadly bombings in Bali and Jakarta.

Bashir, a Muslim cleric who allegedly leads the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), faces 20 years if convicted of trying to topple the government through terrorism and to establish an Islamic state.

In a radio interview before the hearing, he said his trial has produced no proof of his guilt. "The issue now is the extremely high likelihood that foreigners have intervened in it," Bashir told Elshinta radio.

The 64-year-old cleric alleged that the US Central Intelligence Agency was behind last week's car bombing of the American-run JW Marriott hotel, which killed 11 people. [...]

Comment: Not only was Bashir throwing around dangerous allegations,the evidence against him was less than convincing..

Flashback: Terrorism charges filed against Bashir

Friday 15 October 2004

Indonesian prosecutors have filed terrorism charges against cleric Abu Bakar Bashir in a major step towards a new trial of the accused leader of South-east Asia's Jemaah Islamiya network.

"It has been submitted to the south Jakarta court today," Didik Istiyanta, south Jakarta state prosecutor, said on Friday.

Asked whether the charges related to terrorism, he said, "Something like that," adding, "but for details, wait until the trial".

Another prosecutor, Andi Herman, confirmed the charges were related to terrorism. "Yes they are," he said, but declined to elaborate.

Herman said normally a trial would be convened within two weeks of the charges being submitted.

The attorney general's office had said earlier Bashir would face charges of helping to plot the August 2003 blast at the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta which killed 12 people and of involvement in a conspiracy to hide large amounts of explosives in central Java.

Charges denied

Authorities believe Bashir inspired fighters who bombed nightclubs on the tourist island of Bali in 2002 and who carried out the Marriott bombing and other attacks.

Bashir, who denies any connections with Jemaah Islamiya or terrorism, was first arrested days after the Bali blasts that killed 202 people, amid suspicions he led Jemaah Islamiya and had links to violent acts.

However, following a trial using the ordinary criminal code, the court said there was not enough evidence to prove Bashir led the group, and ultimately only convictions related to immigration violations were upheld in appeals courts.

After he had served time on those convictions, Indonesian police detained Bashir under a tough anti-terror law passed in the wake of the Bali bombings.

Flashback: Profile: Abu Bakar Ba'asyir

Thursday, 29 April, 2004
BBC News

Abu Bakar Ba'asyir does not cut the terrifying figure expected of a man accused of being a leading figure in the murky world of international terrorism.

He is a frail, 65-year-old man with a wispy beard, embroidered white skull cap and heavy glasses perched on his aquiline nose.

Before his arrest a week after the 2002 Bali bombings, Mr Ba'asyir was a teacher at an Islamic school in Solo, central Java. He still insists he is just a simple preacher.

But according to the Indonesian and foreign governments, Mr Ba'asyir was also the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiah (JI), a shadowy group accused of the 2002 Bali bombings.

Prosecutors accused Mr Ba'asyir of plotting to assassinate Indonesian leader Megawati Sukarnoputri when she was vice-president in a bid to turn the country - the world's most populous Muslim nation - into a hardline Islamic state.

He was also accused of orchestrating a series of church bombings on Christmas Eve 2000.

The problem for the authorities is that Indonesia's courts have not found the evidence compelling.

First the courts acquitted him of being JI's spiritual leader, after judges said there was not enough proof. Then an appeal court overturned a subversion conviction, cutting his original jail term from four years to 18 months, since his only remaining offence was immigration-related.

Denial

Despite his outspoken support for Osama Bin Laden, Mr Ba'asyir denies having personal links with him or with terrorism in general.

The cleric has repeatedly denied all the charges against him, and condemned the Bali bombing as a "brutal act".

Most of the case against Mr Ba'asyir has been based on statements made by a Kuwaiti man, Omar al-Faruq, who was arrested in Indonesia last June and is now in US custody.

Flashback: Bashir condemns embassy bombing

September 18, 2004

The jailed cleric accused of heading a militant group blamed for last week's Australian embassy bombing condemned the attack today, while accusing Indonesian authorities of trying to frame him.

Nine people died on September 9 when a car bomb detonated outside the Australian mission in the Kuningan district of central Jakarta. About 180 people were wounded in the attack blamed on Jemaah Islamiah, a South-East Asian militant network allegedly linked to al-Qaeda.

"I personally condemn the bombing (and) I am deeply sorry and express my condolences to the victims," Abu Bakar Bashir said according to his lawyer Wirawan Adnan who had visited the cleric in his cell in Cipinang Prison.

Bashir has been in jail since 2002, when he was convicted for minor immigration infractions. Prosecutors say they now plan to charge him with heading Jemaah Islamiah, and for a deadly bombing last year at the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta that killed 12.

There has been speculation that he could also be charged over the latest embassy attack.

Bashir has repeatedly denied any involvement in terrorism and claimed that Jakarta buckled under pressure from Washington to arrest him as part of a crackdown on Islamic activists in the world's most populous Muslim nation.

"I deny all accusations that connect the bombing with me," Bashir said. "I had nothing to do with the Kuningan bombing, the Marriott bombing or any other bombing."

"Terrorists must be punished and eliminated for good," he said.

Adnan told reporters that Bashir was convinced that the police were trying to make him a scapegoat to cover up their failure to prevent terrorist attacks.

"At the time of the Marriott bombing I was locked up for eight months. How can that be?" Bashir said, according to his attorney.

Flashback: Jakarta hotel bombing kills 13, injures 149

Asian Political News
Aug. 5 2003

[...] Although initially only one blast had been reported, a Japanese woman who was taking lunch at a restaurant in an adjacent building at the time of the attack told Kyodo News there a second explosion followed the first, and shattered the restaurant's windows.

The Jakarta Post quoted an eyewitness as describing four separate blasts at the hotel, including two smaller explosions on the upper floors of the hotel.

''I was going to take some pictures after the first blast when suddenly the second blast hit after about 10 minutes. The second was the largest of four,'' the eyewitness, a journalist, reportedly told the daily. He said the second blast was the one that caused a crater in the hotel's Sailendra Restaurant.

Earlier, Jakarta Gov. Sutiyoso had told reporters it appeared that a suicide bomber drove a car to the entrance of the hotel and detonated an explosive device. Antara quoted a source as saying the bomb or bombs were brought by a taxi.

Comment: Furthermore, a hotel employee claimed that a booking for the hotel by the US embassy was cancelled just a short time before the attack. Just really good luck perhaps?...

Flashback: US Embassy cancelled the booking of Marriott Hotel 4.5 hours before the explosion

Translated from:
detikcom
5/08/2003

There was something interesting happened just hours before the explosion shocked the JW Marriott Hotel, Mega Kuningan, South
Jakarta. The US Embassy cancelled the booking of 10-20 rooms in that hotel. The cancellation was on 8.00 West Indonesian Time, Tuesday, or only 4.5 hours before the explosion.

This information is from employee of Marriot Hotel who refused to be identified. He explained that the booking was made several days ago.
The US Embassy's guests were planned to stay for 3 days. And the ceremony was planned on Wednesday.

For information, when there was the explosion, the security of US Embassy directly came to the Marriot Hotel in Mega Kuningan. JW
Marriot Hotel is known to be used frequently by US Embassy. On 4 July 2003, the Independent Day of US was celebrated on this hotel. Last year, it was also celebrated there.

Comment: Not only that, but it seems that Indonesian police knew in advance that the hotel would be a target...

Flashback: Jakarta police 'knew hotel was a target'

06/08/2003

Jakarta police seized documents last month showing terrorists were planning an attack in the area around the Marriott Hotel, where 14 people died yesterday in suicide car bombing. [...]

Comment: ...but for some reason the police decided (or were told) not to take any preventative action. Luckily for them, they had the Australian foreign minister to intervene and deny to the world that anyone knew anything...

Flashback: Downer denies Marriott on hit list

news.com.au

FOREIGN Minister Alexander Downer today rejected claims that Indonesian police had discovered a list of terrorist targets, including the JW Marriott Hotel, in recent raids on terror suspects.

Mr Downer said he had heard such media reports and immediately checked with Australian authorities to see what was known.

"I understand now more recently that there wasn't information that was so specific that would identify the Marriott Hotel," he said on ABC radio.

"It was just more general information of possible terrorist attacks and plans to develop terrorist operations. I have been told that it wasn't specific to the Marriott Hotel.

"There wasn't a list which included the Marriott Hotel."

Comment: And it seems that Mr Downer is no stranger to denials...

Downer Denies Vanuatu Spying

Downer Denies Receiving Bali Warning

Downer Denies Police Spying

Downer Denies Knowledge of Indonesian Summit

Downer Denies Butler Report Damages Case For War

Downer Denies Intel Clash

Downer Denies Hicks Move An Election Ploy

Getting back then to the Muslim cleric in question, Bashir has made no secret of his anti-Israel anti-US opinions and his goal to promote Islam throughout South East Asia.

Over the course of many years, US intelligence agencies and their controllers have learned that as they pursue their goal of global economic and political control, there is little or no chance of negotiating the take over of a country with any but the most amoral of leaders. As such, any moral opposition must be taken out before any taking over can be achieved. The "opposition" includes any religious or political leaders who are wise to the game that is being played and are no inclined to play along.

In the present climate, as the US and Israel go about the task of demonising Islam in the minds of all westerners (and in the minds of Islamic people themselves), there is certainly no room for anyone attempting to unite Arabs or Asians and, god or allah forbid, present a moderate face of Islam!

The goal of Israel then, in conjunction with US intelligence agencies, is to continue to provide "evidence" of the need to continue the "war on terror". Naturally, this "evidence" will involve the use of false flag "terror attacks" on Western targets. The blame is then assigned to some Islamic or Arab "terror" group, which can be invented if needed, as a way to divert attention from the real perpetrators and to provide justification for the subsequent targeting of specific countries or regimes. It is a self perpetuating dynamic, or a positive feedback loop, although, from the point of view of the world public, there is certainly nothing positive in such acts.

Evidence for the fact that at least some faction of the US government is aware of and sanctions such covert operations, is to be found in the public pressure that is subsequently put on governments of Islamic countries who are victims of these attacks to make greater efforts to "stamp out the menace of terrorism".

As the above BBC article notes, most of the previous cases against Bashir are based on the testimony of Omar al-Faruq, who was arrested for the Bali bombing and turned over to the CIA. A former Indonesian intelligence officer has some interesting ideas on al-Faruq and his role with the CIA

Omar Al-Faruq Recruited by The CIA

19 Sep 2002

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: Former State Intelligence Coordinating Board (BAKIN) chief A.C. Manulang has said that Kuwaitd citizen Omar Al-Faruq, a terrorist suspect who was arrested in Bogor, West Java, on June 5, 2002 and handed over to the US three days later, is a CIA-recruited agent.

Al Faruq was assigned to infiltrate Islamic radical groups and recruit local agents within these groups.

"When Al Faruq finished his assignments, the CIA created a scenario that he had been arrested," Manulang told Tempo News Room in Jakarta on Thursday afternoon (19/9).

Manulang made this analysis based on the pattern used by Al Faruq, that of having Kuwait citizenship but holding a Pakistani passport, entering Indonesia as a refugee and marrying an Indonesian woman.

This kind of operation is aimed at starting conflicts in Indonesia and creating the image that Indonesia is a land of terrorists.

"After the CIA obtained complete data on this matter, they then made Al-Faruq disappear. It's common in intelligence world," said Manulang.

Manulang said he considered several matters in the arrest of Al Faruq last July to be odd, such as the denial of National Police chief Gen. Da'i Bachtiar over the police's involvement in Al Faruq's arrest, and the lack of official documents in Al Faruq's handing over to the US.

"In the handing over of a detainee to other country, there should be an announcement or deportation document. Al Faruq's case indicated a lack of coordination between the Indonesian police and intelligence agencies," said Manulang.

As for Al Faruq's testimony in Time magazine that he had masterminded the plan to murder Indonesian President Megawati and several bombings in Indonesia, Manulang considered this as an attempt to making Islamic groups the scapegoats for all terrorism incidents.

"Anti-Islam intelligence agencies committed the bombings in Indonesia. They have been trained for this and they are very organized," said Manulang.

Therefore, he added, it was useless to arrest the bombers.

"We must arrest the mastermind of the bombings in Indonesia," stated Manulang.

According to Manulang, it's possible that Al Faruq recruited radical people from Islamic groups for his plan.

In regards to the murder attempt on Megawati, Manulang did not consider this as a serious matter.

"Megawati does not need to be worried. She's not the real target in this matter," said Manulang.

Manulang requested the government immediately verify the CIA report on Al Faruq.

"Such a report could only be a dummy or false intelligence information that is aimed at misleading the public," stated Manulang. (Sapto Pradityo-Tempo News Room)

Comment: The story of Al-Faruq is an interesting one, and gives us an insight into how the CIA and Mossad go about recruiting, and perhaps even mind programming, their "terrorist" patsies. For those who balk at the idea of mind-programming, we remind you of the publicly admitted US government program "MK Ultra"

From a March 9 2003 New York Times article:

Omar al-Faruq, a confidant of Mr. bin Laden and one of Al Qaeda's senior operatives in Southeast Asia, was captured last June by Indonesian agents acting on a tip from the C.I.A. Agents familiar with the case said a black hood was dropped over his head and he was loaded onto a C.I.A. aircraft. When he arrived at his destination several hours later, the hood was removed. On the wall in front of him were the seals of the New York City Police and Fire Departments, a Western official said.

It was, said a former senior C.I.A. officer who took part in similar sessions, a mind game called false flag, intended to leave the captive disoriented, isolated and vulnerable. Sometimes the décor is faked to make it seem as though the suspect has been taken to a country with a reputation for brutal interrogation.

In this case, officials said, Mr. Faruq was in the C.I.A. interrogation center at the Bagram air base (Afghanistan). American officials were convinced that he knew a lot about pending attacks and the Qaeda network in Southeast Asia, which Mr. bin Laden sent him to set up in 1998.

The details of the interrogation are unknown, though one intelligence official briefed on the sessions said Mr. Faruq initially provided useless scraps of information.

What is known is that the questioning was prolonged, extending day and night for weeks. It is likely, experts say, that the proceedings followed a pattern, with Mr. Faruq left naked most of the time, his hands and feet bound. While international law requires prisoners to be allowed eight hours' sleep a day, interrogators do not necessarily let them sleep for eight consecutive hours.

Mr. Faruq may also have been hooked up to sensors, then asked questions to which interrogators knew the answers, so they could gauge his truthfulness, officials said.

The Western intelligence official described Mr. Faruq's interrogation as "not quite torture, but about as close as you can get." The official said that over a three-month period, the suspect was fed very little, while being subjected to sleep and light deprivation, prolonged isolation and room temperatures that varied from 100 degrees to 10 degrees. In the end he began to cooperate.

And we have to wonder just what the nature of Faruq's cooperation with the CIA was. Given the now overwhelming amount of evidence to show very, very clearly that Western intelligence agencies are in fact the real masterminds of global terror, we wonder just how much longer the facade can be kept in place. More importantly, what will happen when the facade (or part of it) collapses, as it surely must.