Death row Bali bomber planned attack online, say police

Imam Samudra

JAKARTA - A man on death row for the 2002 Bali bombings communicated with Islamic militants on the internet while in prison to organize another deadly attack on the Indonesian resort island last year, police said yesterday.

Imam Samudra used a laptop with a wireless connection smuggled to his prison cell in Bali to hook up to the internet and chat with co-conspirators, said the national police head of the cyber crime unit, Petrus Golose.

"Imam Samudra ... directed the fund-raising for the second Bali bombing," Golose told reporters.

"The laptop allowed Imam Samudra to chat without restrictions in Ahlussunnah and CafeIslam chatrooms," he said referring to religious chatrooms. "This took place before the second Bali bombing."

He didn't say whether the militant used a cellphone to connect to the internet.

Imam Samudra and two other militants, Amrozi and Ali Gufron, have been on death row for more than two years after courts convicted them of playing leading roles in the October 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali that killed 202 people, mostly tourists.

While they were in prison, suicide bombings ripped through three restaurants on the tourist island of Bali last October, killing 20 people.

Golose said the information was obtained after police arrested two men this month who ran a website to raise funds for attacks through online credit card fraud.

One of the men smuggled a laptop to Samudra with the help of a prison official at the request of Noordin Top, believed to be one of the masterminds of some of the deadliest attacks in Indonesia in recent years.

Samudra, Ali Ghufron and Amrozi have since been transferred to an island prison off the southern coast of Java island, where they await executions.

The attorney general's office said this week the executions of the three men had been delayed, citing a judicial review planned by defence lawyers.

The bombings in Bali have been blamed on the Southeast Asian Islamic militant group, Jemaah Islamiah, which authorities say has links with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

- REUTERS