BALI: The alleged mastermind of last month's bombing on Indonesia's Bali island plotted two years ago with the man intelligence agents suspect is Osama bin Laden's chief south-east Asian contact, the suspect's lawyer said yesterday.
The lawyer said his client, Imam Samudra, arrested last week in connection with the Bali attack in which more than 180 people were killed, had confessed to planning earlier attacks with the help of Hambali, who western intelligence agents say is bin Laden's main contact in south-east Asia.
Some Indonesian officials and police from countries of victims of the Bali bombings have said they believe international Islamic militant groups such as bin Laden's al-Qaeda and south-east Asia's Jemaah Islamiah network were behind the blasts.
Evidence of a link is mounting and the apparent confession by one of the main Bali plotters that he was involved with Hambali in earlier attacks will reinforce the suspicions.
Lawyer Nasrun Kalianda told reporters Samudra had told police he and Hambali carried out church bombings on the Indonesian island of Batam in December 2000 along with nine veterans of fighting in Afghanistan. "On the Batam case, he confessed he had meetings with Hambali," Kalianda told reporters. "It was Hambali's plan. Samudra was the co-ordinator."
Intelligence officials say Hambali, a 36-year-old Islamic preacher, is the operational leader of the Jemaah Islamiah, which is alleged to want to set up an Islamic state across a large swathe of south-east Asia. Hambali's whereabouts are not known.
"He \ stayed in Batam for several days," Kalianda said. "The blast used TNT which was taken from Jakarta through Sekupang port and there were nine perpetrators, all Afghanistan veterans." Samudra had already been named a suspect in the explosion at the churches on Batam island, near Singapore.
Kalianda and police have made no mention of any connection between Hambali and the October 12th nightclub bombing in Bali's Kuta Beach tourist centre, the worst attacks since the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington.
Most of the victims in Bali were tourists, about half of them Australian. Police say Samudra was a top planner and ground commander of the Bali attack. They also say he has confessed to involvement in the Bali and Batam bombings.
Mr Erwin Mappaseng, chief of the police criminal investigation department, yesterday told reporters Samudra had a superior named Mukhlas, brother of another suspect in the case.
He said Mukhlas, who was still at large, was a replacement for Hambali. He did not elaborate.
Indonesian police say they have arrested 15 men in connection with the Bali bombings but it is unclear how many are directly implicated.