Author:
Publication: Reuters
Date: October 16, 2002
An unidentified Saudi supplied funds
to the Indonesian-based Jemaah Islamiah network to buy explosives that
may have been used in the Bali bombing, an authority on Osama bin Laden's
al Qaeda said on Wednesday.
The information on the Saudi funding
was gathered in U.S. interrogations of Omar al-Faruq, a Kuwaiti linked
to al Qaeda who was arrested in Indonesia last June and later handed over
to U.S. authorities in Afghanistan, said Rohan Gunaratna, author of the
book "Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror".
The money was sent to Jemaah Islamiah
earlier this year, said Gunaratna, who has seen the U.S. interrogation
papers. The amount sent by the Saudi donor was $74,000, the Financial Times
said.
Gunaratna said the explosives were
bought from Indonesian army officers who sold the material illegally.
In Bali, police chief Budi Setyawan
would neither confirm nor deny a Washington Post story that a former member
of the Indonesian air force had confessed to building the bombs that killed
181 people, mostly foreign travellers, on Saturday.
Asked about the story at a news
conference, he said: "Later that information will be developed. I will
give that to investigators."
Jemaah Islamiah, which has links
to al Qaeda, is a prime suspect behind the blasts in a strip of bars and
clubs packed with foreign travellers on Bali's Kuta Beach on Saturday night.
Gunaratna said the explosives obtained
from the military could have been used in the Bali bombings.
Initial indications have reportedly
shown traces at the site of the military explosive C4, the same material
used in the al Qaeda-linked bombing of the USS Cole in the port of Aden
in Yemen two years to the day before the Bali attack.
Gunaratna said the explosives bought
by Jemaah Islamiah were shipped to the Indonesian island of Ambon, the
site of numerous bloody attacks between Christians and Muslims in recent
years, and divided among different Islamist groups.
In a sign militant Islamic groups
may be on the defensive, the Laskar Jihad, a group whose fighters have
battled Christians in the Molucca islands -- of which Ambon is one of the
largest -- said on Tuesday it had disbanded and would withdraw its combatants.
