Yogita Tahilramani, Jakarta – The lawyer of the Indonesian Mujahidin Council (MMI) chief Abu Bakar Ba'asyir said on Thursday there was no evidence of a link between his client and the al-Qaeda network.
The lawyer, Achmad Michdan, said that during his client's two days of questioning last week the National Police officers cross-checked reports from Malaysian authorities that showed that Ba'asyir could have links with the Afghanistan-based organization led by Osama bin Laden.
Achmad said the police focused their questions on how close he was to an alleged al Qaeda-linked suspect, Muslim preacher Abu Jibril, a native of Lombok in West Nusa Tenggara who was arrested in Malaysia under the Internal Security Act last June for allegedly conspiring to establish an Islamic state. "Ustad Ba'asyir has met Ustad Jibril personally a few times ... both are known preachers. It doesn't mean they were working together to form Daulah Islamiah [Islamic government]," Achmad told The Jakarta Post. "Ustad Ba'asyir also admires Osama bin Laden. But that does not mean he works for the man."
Intelligence officers said Abu Jibril was the nickname of Mohamad Iqbal A. Rahman. Intelligence sources said on Thursday that detained members of a militant wing of the Malaysian group Kumpulan Militan Malaysia (KMM) and detained members of Jemaah Islamiah (JI) in Singapore, kept strong links and also claimed to be headed by three Indonesian leaders, identified as Ba'asyir alias Abdus Samad, Abu Jibril and Hambali, alias Nurjaman Riduan Isamuddin.
The detained members had met and traveled between Singapore and Malaysia quite often, to discuss among other things, the forming of an Islamic state. The detained KMM members in Malaysia also allegedly had links with Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen who is the only person yet to be indicted in the United States for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
"The Indonesian Police have received a lot of heat from the Malaysian and Singaporean authorities ... not directly, but via our government. This is why, the police needed to clarify certain issues about Ba'asyir," an intelligence officer told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.
The police, he said, have not found any evidence of the reports and were uncertain whether they would summon Ba'asyir for another round of questioning.
Ba'asyir was detained last December along with 13 members of KMM by Malaysian authorities, but was released due to lack of evidence. The Muslim cleric is running an Islamic boarding school in Sukoharjo in Central Java.
Another source told the Post that the names of Ba'asyir and Hambali had also been linked to one of the detained Malaysians, identified as Yazid Sufa'at. The source said that Yazid, a businessman, had been singled out as an agent of bin Laden who had helped in running and developing a terrorist network in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines.
Yazid, 37, was arrested by Malaysian authorities in Kedah on December 9 last year. "The news we received here was that Osama had also [allegedly] commanded Yazid via an Indonesian preacher, to meet with two Saudi Arabian men ... Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mirdha, the men who [reportedly] crashed a plane into the Pentagon in the September 11 attacks," the officer said.
"Whether the preacher is Ba'asyir, or Hambali or Iqbal or whoever ... we still need to make absolutely sure. For that, we need to gather more evidence."
Yazid also allegedly met up with Zacarias in Malaysia in September 2000 and had allegedly paid Zacarias "large sums of money" to carry out terrorist activities.
A group of Indonesian attorneys known as the Muslim Defense Team (TPM) announced plans on Monday to sue the Philippine and Malaysian governments for creating the impression that Indonesia is a hub for terrorists, and for naming Ba'asyir as a member of the al-Qaeda terrorist network.