Osama bin-Laden, who is said to have transferred $74,000 to an Indonesian Islamic extremist group to buy three tons of C4 plastic explosives for the Bali bombing attack, is also planning to mount attacks on Israelis and Israeli targets.
These new revelations are contained in a secret U.S. intelligence report published by the London Sunday Times weekly. The American document is said to include details of a confession by senior Bin Laden aide Omar Faruk, who was Bin Laden's envoy in south-east Asia until he was arrested in Indonesia last June and handed over to the CIA in Afghanistan.
Faruk said the funds for the Bali attack, which killed more than 180 people at a nightclub in the Indonesian holiday resort last Saturday, were transferred from an account in the name of Sheikh Abu Abdullah Emirati, a pseudonym used by Bin Laden.
The money was received by Abu Bakr Bashir, leader of al Jama'ah al Islamiya, the group which is suspected of having executed the attack. With the money in his hand, Abu Bakr sent an assistant to buy the explosives, which were illegally sold by elements in the Indonesian army.
Faruk said that bin Laden, together with al-Qaeda members, had a variety of plans to kill Westerners, Indonesians and Israelis, including a plan to shoot Americans and Israelis staying in hotels in Indonesia. The plan was abandoned as it would not have a large-scale impact. Another plan was to hijack a passenger airplane and to crash it into an Israeli target.
Kuwaiti-born Faruk said he plotted the attacks with Indonesian co-conspirators after arriving in south-east Asia in the early 1990s with the goal of setting up links with Islamic militant groups. He had tried to enrol as a trainee pilot in anticipation of a suicide mission before he participated in the Khalden training camp in Afghanistan.
In 2000, the British paper reported, he had accompanied Bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, on a visit to Indonesia in a bid to forge closer links with extremist groups that were seeking to drive out Christians from Indonesia.
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
