Bali Was Named a Target in February, Police Say

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.

The following month, Jemaah Islamiah leaders met in southern Thailand. Concluding that security measures made it too difficult to attack military installations or embassies, they agreed that they would bomb a “soft target,” such as a tourist site, the police investigator said.

In February, the Jemaah Islamiah leadership convened another meeting in Thailand, this time in the capital, Bangkok. Six top leaders attended and nominated Bali as the place to attack next. Bashir, Mukhlas and Wan Min were all at the meeting, the investigator said.

Also attending was the elusive Riduan Isamuddin, 36, better known as Hambali, the operations leader of Jemaah Islamiah and a suspected Al Qaeda operative with a long history of terrorist attacks in Southeast Asia. He is wanted in at least four countries: Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines.

The fifth leader who took part in the meeting was a Malaysian named Noor Din Mohammed Top, 33, who had attended the university where Wan Min taught. Both Wan Min and Top are also believed to be leaders of Kumpulan Militan Malaysia, a terrorist group affiliated with Jemaah Islamiah.

The sixth Jemaah Islamiah leader who attended the meeting has not been identified.

Mukhlas was given operational authority for the Bali attack. Under instructions from Hambali, Wan Min gave Mukhlas $35,500 to finance the bombing, according to the police official. Wan Min told police that he did not know the money was intended for the Bali bombing until later.

Detailed planning for the Bali bombing took place in August and September. Mukhlas met in Central Java with at least two of the bomb plotters, Imam Samudra, who coordinated the attack, and Amrozi, Mukhlas’ brother, who bought the car and chemicals used for the bombing, the investigator said. Amrozi and Imam Samudra also have been arrested.

In September, Bashir concluded that it was the wrong time to carry out violent acts because it could provoke a police crackdown, according to a report issued this week by the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based research organization.

The younger members of the Jemaah Islamiah council overruled Bashir, however, and the attack went forward, the report said.

Intelligence officials say that Hambali appointed Mukhlas to take over his role as Jemaah Islamiah operations leader earlier this year.

They say Hambali was unable to organize any attacks because he had been forced into hiding by a police manhunt mounted after the discovery of the Singapore plot.