Raymond Bonner, Jakarta – An Indonesian who was indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington in connection with the killing of two American school teachers in Papua Province has admitted to the police that he fired shots during the ambush, but he also says he saw three men in Indonesian military uniforms firing at the teachers' convoy, his lawyer said Friday.

Anthonius Wamang, the accused, who was turned over by the FBI to the Indonesian police Wednesday, told the police he had been given the bullets by a senior Indonesian soldier, Wamang's lawyer, Albert Rumbekwan, said in a telephone interview from Papua.

The administration of President George W. Bush had pushed hard for a resolution of the case, and expressed satisfaction when Wamang and 11 others suspects, one as young as 14, were detained late Wednesday. But Wamang's statements will likely prolong the investigation, as well as complicate efforts of the Bush administration to resume full military relations with Indonesia. They contradict previous public statements by senior officials from the US administration that the Indonesian military was not involved in the ambush.

Wamang, a member of a Papuan separatist organization, said he had emptied one magazine from an M-16 rifle, Rumbekwan said. Investigators said previously that they had found scores of bullet casings at the scene of the ambush, in 2002, on road owned by an American mining company, Freeport-McMoRan.

Other evidence emerged Friday that could put the United States in an uncomfortable position in this highly nationalistic country. According to the men detained Wednesday, they were lured by the FBI into showing up at a small hotel, and were then promptly turned over to the Indonesian police.

The US Embassy in Jakarta declined to comment about Wamang's statements or allegations of an FBI trap.

"We believed we were going to America," Viktus Wanmang, a 57-year-old farmer who was among those who showed up at the hotel and was then detained, said in a telephone interview Friday. He was released, as were three others, on Friday.

The men were told they would be interviewed about the case in the United States because it would be safer for them there, said Denny Yomaki, an officer with the Institute for Human Rights Study and Advocacy in Papua, who spent much of Friday interviewing the men who had been detained and released. The men were told their families would be given 650,000 rupiah, or about $70, for each day they were in the United States, Yomaki said.

The men were told to go to the Amole II Hotel in the town of Timika on Wednesday evening. They arrived with bags packed for a trip to the United States, Wanmang and Yomaki said.

But when they reached the hotel, they were met by two FBI agents and a third American, who some of the men thought was a Freeport employee, Yomaki said. The FBI agents hustled the men into a truck with no windows.

"The car was driven at high speeds," Wanmang said. "When we stopped, when the car door opened, there was a group of police waiting," he said.

None of the men have been charged with any crimes, except Anthonius Wamang, who has been indicted in the United States on two counts of murder and eight counts of attempted murder.

Eight Americans were wounded in the ambush, and an Indonesian teacher was killed, along with two American teachers, Edwin Burgon, of Sun River, Oregon, and Ricky Spier, of Littleton, Colorado. The teachers worked at the Freeport school.

Earlier this year, the group Human Rights Study and Advocacy issued a report connecting Wamang to the Indonesian military. On one occasion, he was paid by the Indonesian military for his travel to Jakarta, the report said.