Indonesian police will question jailed Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir next week in an attempt to link him to the Bali bombings, Bashir’s lawyer said on Friday. "I was informed that he would be questioned on Wednesday. I heard they want to link him with the Bali bombings," the lawyer, Wirawan Adnan, told AFP. Bashir, 65, is scheduled to be freed from Jakarta’s Salemba prison on April 29 after serving a sentence for immigration offences. An appeal court earlier cleared him of a terrorism charge. Foreign governments accuse the fiery cleric of having led the al-Qaeda -linked Jemaah Islamiyah (JI).
| Intentional blindness and probably vice presidential protection keeps the right people in Indonesia from noticing... |
"We are developing information from witnesses both at home and abroad such as Malaysia and Singapore, in addition to information from Hambali," Bachtiar was quoted by the state Antara news agency as saying. Indonesia recently received information from the United States on the questioning of chief terror suspect Hambali. The US is holding Hambali at an undisclosed location following his arrest in Thailand last August. Adnan said Bashir had accused the United States of faking evidence against him.
"This is a tyrannical move. This amounts to terror against Indonesian law enforcement and independence. Why are they afraid of me? I’m just an old man who doesn’t have an army," he quoted Bashir as saying. The police anti-terror chief, Pranowo, was quoted by Detikcom news portal as saying that Bashir had long been suspected of a role in the Bali bombings. "All this time we have tried to complete evidence and now we are gathering new evidence," Pranowo said. He could not be reached for comment. Adnan said Bashir would refuse to answer any police questions until he has been released. A spokesman for Bashir’s Indonesian Mujahedeen Council, Fauzan Al Anshori, said he suspected that police would arrest the cleric again as a Bali suspect. "It looks like police are serious in carrying out the order from the US," he said. US Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said last month that Bashir was deeply involved in terror acts. Bashir, dismissing the claim, said: "They absolutely cannot accept that Islamic figures whom they have slandered are being released." |