Cleric Sues Time for £70m Over Article

The Indonesian Muslim cleric accused of involvement in last week's attack in Bali filed a law suit yesterday claiming millions of pounds of damages from an American magazine which linked him to al-Qaida.

Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, the leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, is claiming a trillion Indonesian rupia (£70m) from Time, the weekly American magazine, for an article published last month linking him with a suspected al-Qaida militant handed over to the United States on suspicion of planning attacks on US targets in south-east Asia.

The United States, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia have repeatedly called on Indonesia to ban the group and arrest Mr Ba'asyir, although he has always denied links with terrorism.

President Megawati Sukarnoputri's administration has resisted such action, saying there is no evidence against Mr Ba'aysir. Security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono claimed yesterday that "as an organisation, Jemaah Islamiyah doesn't exist in Indonesia".

Earlier this year the elderly cleric, who runs a religious school in Java, was questioned by police but released. He is due to be interrogated again today.

Mr Ba'aysir has described the attack in Bali as "brutal". He said: "The bombings were engineered by infidels in order to launch war against Islam."

Earlier, Mr Ba'asyir said that Time had spread lies and insulted Muslims all over the world in the article. "I filed this lawsuit because Time magazine has ruined my good name and has defamed me, Muslims and Indonesians," he said.

In an article published on September 15, Time quoted a CIA report linking Mr Ba'asyir to Omar al-Faruq, an alleged al-Qaida operative who was arrested in a small village outside Jakarta in June.

The Time report described how, after three months in prison, al-Faruq, 31, had told the CIA at the beginning of September that he had been ordered to orchestrate attacks on US interests, especially embassies, in south-east Asia.

The report also alleged that the Kuwaiti was the mastermind behind a series of bombings of churches in Indonesia over Christmas 2000 which killed 18 and injured more than 100. Earlier that year, al-Faruq had "cased the US embassy in Jakarta to develop a plan to destroy [it] with a large car bomb," the CIA memo quoted by Time said.

Al-Faruq is alleged to have told the CIA that Mr Ba'asyir had tried to procure arms and explosives from al-Qaida. Key figures in the Indonesian Mojahedin Council, founded by Mr Ba'asyir, were in touch with al-Qaida, the CIA memo claimed. The council was unwilling to comment last night.

Time is standing by the allegations.