Radical Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir received a message from Osama bin Laden in 2001 inviting him to move to Afghanistan, prosecutors told a Jakarta court on Monday. They said the message from bin Laden was passed on by a top terror suspect called Hambali and was delivered to Bashir by a man called Muhammad Rais. Prosecutors made the allegation in their indictment against Rais, who went on trial Monday on charges related to the Marriott hotel blast in Jakarta last August. Foreign governments have long alleged that Bashir was head of the al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terror group. A district court last September convicted Bashir of treason by taking part in a JI plot to overthrow the government. An appeal court in November overturned that conviction but ruled that Bashir must serve three years for immigration offences and forging documents. He is appealing against that ruling to the supreme court and a decision is expected this week.
The prosecutors, who took turns reading Rais’s indictment, said Rais returned to Jakarta on September 12, 2001, after studying for two years in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He travelled to the town of Bogor to deliver a letter from Hambali’s brother, who lived in Pakistan, to his family there. The next day, prosecutors said, Rais travelled to the city of Solo to meet Bashir and to deliver a message from bin Laden which he (Rais) had received from Hambali. Hambali was in Afghanistan at the time. "The content of the message was greetings from Sheikh Osama bin Laden. Osama bin Laden invited Abu Bakar Bashir to go to Afghanistan if he thinks the situation in Indonesia for Abu Bakar Bashir does not make it possible for him to live in Indonesia," the indictment said.
| The link doesn't come as a surprise. The method of conveyance is interesting. And of course it reinforces Pakistan's position as the epicenter of international terrorism. |
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