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Spiritual leader Bashir to be probed in Bali bombing

AFP, Jakarta
The reputed spiritual leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah regional terror network will be investigated as a suspect in the October 12 Bali bombings, Indonesian police said Wednesday.
Abu Bakar Bashir is not currently a suspect "but things will definitely head in that direction," Zainuri Lubis, spokesman for the Bali bombing investigative team, told AFP.
National police chief General Da'i Bachtiar told legislators Tuesday that Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) was behind the Bali attack and that Bashir had earlier given his blessing to a jihad (holy war) in Indonesia and Singapore against the United States and its allies.
Malaysia and Singapore say Bashir, 64, is the spiritual leader of JI.
Police arrested the elderly Muslim cleric a week after the Bali blast, accusing him of links to earlier acts of terrorism. Wednesday was the first time they have described him as a likely suspect in the bombings on the resort island that killed more than 190 people, most of them foreign
tourists.
Police have previously said that Mukhlas, one of 30 suspects in custody for the bombing, is JI's operations chief and was also involved in meetings to plan the Bali attack. Ten others, including three Malaysians, remain on a wanted list.
Police have linked Bashir to the Bali bombing through a meeting held at his home in the Central Javanese city of Solo with several key suspects already in custody, Kompas newspaper's online edition reported Wednesday.
"They held that meeting to ask Bashir's blessing. This is something newly obtained to bring Abu Bakar Bashir into the Bali case," it quoted the head of the bombing investigation, Inspector General I Made Mangku Pastika, as saying.
Pastika could not be reached for confirmation.
One of Bashir's lawyers, Muhammad Assegaf, called police allegations that Bashir was behind the Bali bombing both startling and strange.
"Because during the interrogation of all the suspects in the Bali case, according to information from police themselves, there is not
even one witness who has connected Abu Bakar Bashir... to the Bali bomb blast," Assegaf said on local radio.
Last week detectives submitted evidence files on Bashir to prosecutors and said they want him to face charges of treason and of staging a series of bomb attacks in Indonesia on Christmas Eve 2000.
The treason charge is based on an alleged plot to kill Megawati Sukarnoputri when she was still vice president.
Lubis said that because of the treason and Christmas bombing investigations already underway in Jakarta, police have not yet been able to question Bashir about the Bali bombings.
Questioning will come "after the process in Jakarta is finished," Lubis said.
Last May Vice President Hamzah Haz paid a controversial visit to the Al-Mukmin Muslim boarding school founded by the cleric and met with Bashir.
The elderly cleric has denied claims he has links to terrorism but has described al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden as "a true Muslim fighter."