Tim Johnston, Jakarta – The case against the alleged leader of Jemaah Islamiah, the terror group behind the Bali bombings, was boosted yesterday when Abbas, a confessed senior member of JI, gave a detailed account of Abu Bakar Bashir's involvement in the running of the group.
Until his testimony, the case had been in danger of collapsing after witnesses withdrew their confessions and convicted JI members would not confirm that Bashir had anything to do with the group. Abbas' evidence, however, is probably not enough to convict Bashir on its own.
The 65-year-old cleric is charged with inspiring bombers to carry out the Bali and Marriott Hotel bombings, but when Abbas was asked if he believed the Marriott bombing was carried out on Bashir's orders, he replied with a simple "no".
Throughout the morning, proceedings in the makeshift court in an auditorium in south Jakarta teetered on the brink of chaos as 300 Bashir supporters sitting behind the witness responded to shrill declamations by the defence lawyers with shouts of "Allahu Akbar" ("God is great").
Abbas was finally rushed out of the court when the hearing threatened to become a melee after the defence lawyers' microphones stopped working.
A veteran of six years' fighting in Afghanistan, Abbas was head of Mantiqi III, one of JI's four regional commands. It covered the Philippine island of Mindanao, the Indonesian island of Sulawesi and the Malaysian state of Sabah and was responsible for training for the whole group.
Abbas told the court that he was sworn in as head of Mantiqi III by Bashir in late 2001. "There is only one man who has the right to promote people, and that is the leader of JI," he said. "And who was the leader of JI?" asked the chief judge, Soedarto. "Ustad [teacher] Abu Bakar Bashir," Abbas replied.
Abbas was an instructor at the group's main training camp, Camp Hudaibyah, in the southern Philippines when Bashir visited to speak at a "graduation" in 2000.
He described Bashir being met off the plane by Fathur Rahman al-Ghozi, who died in a firefight with Philippine police earlier this year while on the run from a 17-year sentence for a series of bombings in Manila that killed 22 people in 2000.
"He [Bashir] said this world is a world of jihad, and that what we do here is also jihad," Abbas told the court. He said he complained to Bashir about conditions in the jungle camp. "He told me about his trip to Afghanistan and when he met Osama bin Laden," Abbas said. "He said we should be thankful because they are living in a cave with very basic amenities." The claim that Bashir visited the camp in 2000 was first made earlier this month by another witness, 30-year-old Yudi Lukito Kurniawan.