Bali bomb suspect cleric in hospital

A RADICAL Islamic cleric suspected of a series of church bombings in Indonesia was in hospital yesterday and will not risk arrest by submitting to police for questioning.

Abu Bakar Bashir, 64, was taken into hospital for observation in his home city of Solo on Thursday night, hours before he was due to visit officers in the capital Jakarta.

Bashir is allegedly the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, the group identified by many as the prime suspect in the Bali nightclub bombing. Bashir has respiratory problems according to a lung specialist. Bashir had earlier delivered a defiant sermon to about 300 followers, saying he expects to be arrested soon.

Following the Bali bombings, in which 180 died and 300 were wounded, the Indonesian government started preparing an emergency decree making it easier to arrest alleged terrorists.

An Indonesian police general said he was summoned to Jakarta to answer questions about the attacks based on information from an alleged al-Qaida operative, Omar al-Faruq, now in US custody.

Bashir said he was not involved in the Bali attack, did not know al-Faruq and was not a terrorist. He accused the US of inventing both al-Qaida and Jemaah Islamiyah to discredit Islam and praised al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden for waging war on America.

Meanwhile, Australian Prime Minister John Howard yesterday faced an angry barrage of reporters and relatives during a public address in Bali.

Mr Howard defended the amount of time that it was taking to release bodies for repatriation and repeated his claim that Australia did not know in advance of a planned attack on the holiday island.

The British, US and New Zealand governments had all agreed that there was not sufficient evidence to issue a warning to travellers, he said.

But yesterday he strongly urged visitors and ex-patriots to leave Indonesia as the threat to westerners had significantly increased. “The situation is a lot more dangerous than it was, short-term visitors should go back home as soon as possible,” he said.

Mr Howard said the US and Australian governments had warned Indonesia for some time to take terrorism threats more seriously.