A key Bali bombing suspect said that Indonesian police threatened him with torture to try to make him incriminate elderly cleric Abu Bakar Bashir.

Amrozi was giving evidence Thursday at the trial of Bashir, who is alleged to lead the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) regional terror network.

Shouts of "Allahu Akbar!" (God is greatest) from Bashir's supporters greeted Amrozi as he arrived in court after being flown from the resort island of Bali under heavy guard.

Prosecutors are attempting to prove that Bashir, 64, heads JI and that he tried to topple the Indonesian government through a terror campaign – a charge punishable by 20 years' jail.

While Bashir himself is not linked to the Bali nightspot blasts which killed 202 people last October, police say it was a JI operation. Amrozi, currently on trial in Bali, has admitted his own part in the plot to bomb "dens of vice".

Amrozi told the Jakarta trial he had fabricated a statement to police in which he said he had heard a sermon from Bashir on "faith and the essence of religion" while he was in Malaysia between 1996-98.

Asked why he made up the statement, Amrozi said: "I have seen my elder brother [Mukhlas] being tortured ... the interrogators warned me, 'Be careful, if you do not mention Abu Bakar Bashir you will be even worse." Amrozi added: "Interrogators said that this [testimony] should be orientated towards that elderly man [Bashir]." The hearing was continuing.

As part of Bashir's alleged terror campaign, prosecutors accuse him of authorising the Christmas Eve bombings of Indonesian churches in 2000 that killed 19 people. He is also accused of plotting to bomb American interests in Singapore, a plot that was foiled with the arrest of 13 JI suspects.

Bashir, 64, denies links to terrorism as US and Jewish inventions and says JI does not even exist. Prosecutors have previously summoned a number of witnesses, including Mukhlas and three other Bali suspects, to tell what they know about Bashir.

None have implicated Bashir in bombings or linked him definitively to JI, although two said they had either believed or had been told he was the network's leader. Mukhlas, who is said by police to be JI's operations chief, made no mention in his testimony last month of having been tortured by police.