The problem with carrying out terror attacks and then blaming it on Muslim patsies is that if you don't silence the patsies for good, they tend to 'sing', and in the case of Muslim Cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, keep on 'singing'...
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
Comment: Bashir
is not alone in making such shocking allegations. About a year ago, former Indonesian
president Abdurrahman Wahid also stated that the Bali bombing has more to do
with government than terrorists.
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. [...]
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.
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.
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. [...]
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 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
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)
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.
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