The Jakarta Post, 4/1/2004 2:00:07 PM
Malaysian suspect in Indonesian custody admits helping Jemaah
Islamiyah bombers
KUALA LUMPUR (AP): A Malaysian terrorist suspect arrested in Indonesia earlier
this year has admitted taking part in bomb attacks by Southeast Asian extremist
group Jemaah Islamiyah, but says he did not know the targets in advance.
Amran Mansor was arrested on Feb. 26 in Indonesian city of Surakarta, Central Java.
Authorities say he admitted taking part in the bombing of churches in nine Indonesian
cities on Christmas Eve 2000 that killed 19 people.
Amran has also been accused of transporting TNT and the bomb-making chemical
ammonium nitrate to Indonesia so other Jemaah Islamiyah operatives could carry out
an attack on the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta last August that killed 12 people.
Amran told Malaysia's TV3 network he was a logistics chief who took orders from
three of Jemaah Islamiyah's top leaders and transported what he described as
weapons, but said he didn't knowoperational details.
"Actually I did not know who the target was in the operations," Amran said in the
report, broadcast late Wednesday. "The target was decided by higher-ups such as
Hambali, Imam Samudra and Mukhlas. So my role was, according to what was told to
me, to control the logistics aspect."
Hambali, suspected of being Jemaah Islamiyah's main link to al-Qaeda until his arrest
in Thailand last year, is accused of masterminding a string of deadly bomb attacks in
Indonesia, including the 2002 nightclub blasts on Bali island that killed 202 people
and the car bombing at the Jakarta Marriott.
Samudra and Mukhlas have both been sentenced to death by Indonesian courts for
organizing the Bali bombings.
TV3, which interviewed Amran at an undisclosed location in Indonesia, said Amran
admitted he smuggled weapons from an area on the Malaysia-Thailand border to
Indonesia. It wasn't immediately clear if this referred to materials used in the Jakarta
bombing.
Amran said he found out only later that innocent people had died in attacks by
Jemaah Islamiyah, which wants to create an Islamic superstate comprising Malaysia,
Indonesia, Singapore and the southern Philippines.
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