Al Qaeda man linked to Bali bombing

HONG KONG - A senior al Qaeda operative from Yemen is one of three "critical" suspects being hunted by authorities over the Bali bombing, reports Time magazine.

It identified the Yemeni as Syafullah, whose activities included the 1996 bombing of a United States military barracks in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 servicemen.

Time said one of the other two "top-tier" suspects was an Indonesian militant named Syawal, who was an instructor at an al Qaeda-linked training camp on the island of Sulawesi.

The other man police are hunting is a Malaysian, Zubair, who reportedly fought in Afghanistan in the late 1980s and is suspected of leading the surveillance and mapping team for the Bali attack on October 12.

If proved, Syafullah could be the first member of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organisation, which carried out last year's September 11 attacks on the US, to be directly linked to the Bali bombings.

Although some Indonesian and many foreign Governments have blamed al Qaeda for the Bali attacks, authorities have yet to arrest or publicly name any al Qaeda member.

Indonesian authorities say 12 people were involved in the attacks, in which more than 180 people died, and have already arrested two leading suspects.

Police have found a haul of extremist Islamic propaganda - including video recordings of speeches by bin Laden - at two houses once rented by the alleged mastermind of last month's bombings, Imam Samudra, officers said.

"We found VCD recordings of speeches by Osama bin Laden and military training clips featuring Arabs," said Sergeant Wahyono, who uses only one name.

The state news agency Antara reported that officers also recovered several militant Islamic magazines, a tape recorder and a computer.

Officers also unearthed an empty cartridge for an M-16 machinegun during searches of two houses close to Solo city, central Java, said local policeman Bambang Hameru.

Both houses were once rented by Samudra and several of his alleged accomplices, Hameru said.

The houses were about 3km from the Ngruki Islamic boarding school, which until recently was run by detained cleric Abu Bakar Bashir.

Samudra was arrested last week in Java.

He has been moved to Jakarta for further questioning, and is then likely to be moved to Bali, along with other suspects arrested last week in Banten.

Australian police said yesterday that they believed a suicide bomber exploded the first Bali bomb, a device containing metal shrapnel, near the crowded dance floor of Paddys Bar, just before the explosion that destroyed the nearby Sari Club.

Ben McDevitt, Australian Federal Police general manager for national operations, said yesterday that the suicide bomber was believed to be Iqbal, named this week by Samudra.

McDevitt said forensic evidence from an examination of the bombing scene corroborated Samudra's account.

The examination indicated that the device used in Paddys Bar exploded 80cm to 120cm from the ground near the dance floor.

It is believed the device carried 500g to 1kg of TNT explosive as well as metal shrapnel.

Earlier, federal police commissioner Mick Keelty said forensic evidence lent credibility to the suicide bomber theory.

"The bomb was very close to that person and we've been able to obtain samples from the body that are consistent with the thought that it might have been a suicide bomber."

In the Philippines, a Muslim extremist leader warned that the country's support for the United States-led global war on terror and its new military agreement with Washington made it a prime target for terrorist attacks.

Hamsiraji Sali told ABS-CBN television in an interview broadcast yesterday that Iraq was planning to send at least three would-be suicide bombers to attack civilian targets in the Philippines. No other details of the planned attack were given.

Sali is one of five leaders of the extremist Abu Sayyaf group on a US wanted list of terrorists.

Southern Philippine military commander Lieutenant-General Narciso Abaya dismissed Sali's threats as propaganda.

- AGENCIES

Full coverage: Bali bomb blast

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