The Jihadis' Tale — page 2

BIN LADEN'S OPERATION?
The biggest revelation from Mukhlas' 30-page confession concerns al-Qaeda and bin Laden himself. A self-professed senior leader in JI, Mukhlas says that "because of [his] Arabic language skills," he was introduced to bin Laden in a town in Afghanistan called Joji in the late 1980s. Mukhlas doesn't describe the meeting in detail, but does divulge that he and other top JI personnel were careful to nurture these ties to bin Laden and al-Qaeda in the years that followed. And Mukhlas says he believes al-Qaeda money was directly responsible for the bombs set off in Kuta, Bali, which were paid for out of a $25,000 grant provided to the plotters by Riduan (Hambali) Isamuddin, then JI's operations chief. "Since Hambali is not known to have any other big funding sources and because he often goes to Afghanistan," Mukhlas observes, "there is a strong possibility that the source came from Afghanistan, namely Osama bin Laden." In summing up their interrogation of Mukhlas, the Indonesian investigators echo this assertion, categorically concluding: "Jemaah Islamiah's jihad operations were funded by al-Qaeda."

That's a striking assessment, which appears to directly contradict statements by Da'i Bachtiar, Indonesia's national police chief, who has repeatedly denied that investigators have discovered clear ties between JI and al-Qaeda. On Jan. 8, he told reporters in Singapore, "We haven't come to any conclusion yet whether there is a link between Jemaah Islamiah and al-Qaeda." That there is a disconnect between a top official in Jakarta and investigators on the ground comes as no surprise. While Indonesian police have been lauded for their swift rounding up of many key conspirators in the Bali blasts, the stances taken by Indonesia's ranking officials have drawn more mixed reviews. In the months since the October bombings, senior government bureaucrats have sometimes refused to acknowledge that JI existed at all, at other times playing down the group's importance and size. "There's a lot of political pressure to keep Bali contained," explains Zachary Abuza, an American academic in Jakarta whose book on Islamic militancy in Southeast Asia will be published in May. High-level Indonesian politicians would like to see the investigation wrapped up quickly, says Abuza, and blame for the Bali attack placed on a small group acting alone. Hence the reluctance to make the link to bin Laden. "If they say there is an al-Qaeda connection, it opens up a whole new can of worms."

Intriguingly, Indonesian security officers continue to examine another, separate al-Qaeda association with the Bali bombings, regional intelligence sources say. Investigators are still trying to pin down the circumstances under which a hardened al-Qaeda operative named Syafullah came to be present on the island in the days leading up to the blasts. The Yemeni national, who entered Indonesia by using a fake U.S. passport a few days before the explosions in Kuta, is believed to have supervised the fine-tuning of the chemical mixture of the main Bali bomb to achieve maximum impact, leaving Indonesia just hours before the bombs went off. "Anyone can make a bomb," says a source close to the Bali investigation, "but to get that kind of devastating, incinerating explosion you have to really know what you're doing. Many people believe that JI doesn't have that technical expertise—and that Syafullah provided it."

While the Syafullah link is still being investigated, the confessions of Mukhlas and Samudra strongly suggest that al-Qaeda money has been at the heart of JI's growth in recent years, resulting in a deeply entrenched, meticulously organized paramilitary group armed with a fearsome stockpile of weapons that is carefully itemized in the Mukhlas document. The list includes everything from scores of handguns and automatic rifles to mines, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. According to Mukhlas' confession, JI is an impressively organized outfit with its own secret training facility: "The Islamic Military Academy Al-Jama'ah Al-Islamiyyah trains cadets in periods of two years or four semesters at a hidden site called 'Mu'askar.'"

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