Police Chief Says Bali Bomb Suspect Admits Masterminding Attack

The alleged mastermind of last month's Bali bombings which killed almost 200 people admitted yesterday that he was the overall commander of the terrorist attack, Indonesia's national police chief announced after personally interrogating the suspect.

General Da'i Bachtiar said Imam Samudra, 32, who was arrested on Thursday boarding a ferry from Java to Sumatra, also confessed to participating in a spate of church bombings across Indonesia on Christmas Eve 2000 which left 19 people dead, and an unsuccessful attack on a church in the capital, Jakarta, last year.

"The one who carried out the surveys [in Bali] and determined the date and place was Imam Samudra himself," the police chief said after questioning the suspect at a police station in Banten province, 50 miles west of the capital. Mr Samudra allegedly chose the Sari Club, packed with foreigners, as the main target.

"He ordered the field coordinator to 'go ahead and do it'. "

Mr Samudra personally chose the US consulate on the resort island as the third target, police said, but the bomb meant for the mission went off prematurely, 200 metres away.

Police paraded the suspect before the press yesterday, until he started shouting "Allah is the greatest!" and was whisked away. The suspect, an engineer from Banten who was born Abdul Aziz, was wearing a T-shirt and trousers, and had his hands cuffed behind his back.

The head of Indonesia's detective unit, General Erwin Mapasaeng, said later that the first bomb to explode on October 12 in Bali, at Paddy's Bar in Kuta, was detonated by a suicide bomber named Iqbal. "He carried it in a bag on his back," Gen Mapasaeng said. "He went into the bar and detonated it."

He said the all-Indonesian terror operation was split into two groups, one comprising seven members led by Amrozi - a car mechanic arrested almost three weeks ago - and another of five men from Banten, which Samudra allegedly led himself.

Gen Mapasaeng said that six alleged plotters were arrested this week, mostly members of the Banten faction. Two of them, Rauf and Yudi, were allegedly Samudra's assistants. The identities and roles of the other three remain unclear.

The terror attack was financed by a gold robbery in Banten, which netted £28,000, Gen Mapasaeng said.

He added that Mr Samudra left Indonesia in the early 1990s for Afghanistan and stayed there for two-and-a-half years receiving training on how to use automatic rifles and anti-tank weapons. He then allegedly lived in Malaysia for six years, working in the clothing trade.

It was there that he first met Amrozi and other fundamentalists including, possibly, the alleged founder of Jemaah Islamiyah, the Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Ba'aysir, who is in custody on suspicion of involvement in the Christmas 2000 bombings.

When he returned, Mr Samudra became an Islamist bent on waging holy war, police said, adding that he was well-versed in the internet, using it to learn bombmaking techniques and to talk to other groups.