JAKARTA, Indonesia — Two leaders of the Jemaah Islamiah terrorist network have confessed that the group's top council proposed Bali as a bombing target during a February meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, according to a senior police officer investigating the attack.
Six leaders of the Southeast Asian network were present at the meeting, including Abu Bakar Bashir, the suspected leader of Jemaah Islamiah, the senior officer said Wednesday. Bashir has since been arrested in Indonesia for his alleged role in other terrorist attacks.
The statements attributed to the two suspects are the first evidence directly linking Bashir to the Oct. 12 nightclub bombing, which killed at least 191 people, many of them young foreign tourists. Bashir, a radical 64-year-old cleric once imprisoned in Indonesia for sedition, denies any part in terrorism and contends that Jemaah Islamiah does not exist.
The arrest of the two Jemaah Islamiah leaders and their reported confessions are a significant breakthrough for the Bali investigation.
The biggest break came last week when Indonesian police tracked down religious teacher Ali Gufron, better known as Mukhlas, at a house in Central Java. When police cornered him, he tried to grab a pistol from one of the officers, but quickly was subdued, the police official said. Police found that he also was carrying his own FN handgun. Mukhlas, 42, has since admitted organizing and overseeing the Bali attack, the police official said.
On Sept. 27, two weeks before the Bali bombing, Malaysian police seized Wan Min Wan Mat, 42, a former university lecturer who had been on the run for months. Wanted for his alleged role in terrorist activities in Malaysia, he was arrested when he slipped back into the country to visit his wife and four children.
Both Mukhlas and Wan Min have begun talking to authorities, and their accounts match, said the senior police officer, who asked not to be identified.
The initial planning for the Bali attack came just weeks after Jemaah Islamiah suffered its first major setback.
The group's operations were severely disrupted last December when Singapore authorities learned of the terrorists' plan for suicide attacks on the U.S. embassy and six other high-profile targets in that country with massive truck bombs. Dozens were arrested in Singapore and Malaysia.
