Bin Laden cash may have been used for Bali blasts

A MILITANT Indonesian Muslim who has confessed to involvement in October’s bombings on Bali island said there was a “strong possibility” money from Osama bin Laden was used for the attacks, Time Magazine has reported.

Indonesian police have previously insisted and reiterated again yesterday that they had not found any evidence linking bin Laden or his al-Qaida network to the Bali attack, which killed at least 193 people, most of them foreign tourists.

But in its latest edition, Time said it had seen confessions made to police by two of the key Indonesian men behind the attacks, Mukhlas and Iman Samudra. Police have publicly said both had admitted roles in the blasts.

Time said in Mukhlas' confession, he said he believed it was money from al-Qaida that was used for the bombing operation. Mukhlas said $25,000 had been given to the plotters by a man known as Hambali, former operational chief of Jemaah Islamiah, a shadowy Southeast Asian network of militant Muslims.

Indonesian police have said Mukhlas had replaced Hambali before being arrested.

"Since Hambali is not known to have any other big funding sources and because he often goes to Afghanistan, there is a strong possibility that the source came from Afghanistan, namely Osama bin Laden," Mukhlas said in his confession.

Hambali's whereabouts are not known. The magazine said Indonesian investigators had concluded that Jemaah

Islamiah's "jihad operations" were funded by al-Qaida.

A number of Indonesians arrested over the Bali blasts are members of Jemaah Islamiah, which the United States and other countries have linked to al-Qaida.

Washington has blamed al-Qaeda for the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. Indonesian police denied the Time report. "We have never issued such kind of information," Brigadier General Edward Aritonang, spokesman for the police investigating the Bali attacks, said.

Asked whether police have found any links connecting bin Laden or al-Qaida to the explosions, Aritonang said: "Not yet."

The magazine said Mukhlas had been introduced to bin Laden in Afghanistan in the late 1980s. It quoted the confession as saying Mukhlas and other top Jemaah Islamiah personnel had nurtured ties with bin Laden and al-Qaida in the years that followed.

Regional intelligence and security officials say Jemaah Islamiah has planned attacks against Western facilities and other targets across Southeast Asia. Alleged members have been detained in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines as well as Indonesia.

Police on Monday called Mukhlas the "controller" of the Bali attacks.