A senior figure in Jemaah Islamiah, a Southeast Asian terrorist organization, testified today that Osama bin Laden set in motion a series of plots that the group pursued in Indonesia and Singapore. Faiz bin Abu Bakar Bafana, a Malaysian and a treasurer in the underground network, testified that a string of church bombings in Indonesia conducted by Jemaah Islamiah on Christmas Eve 2000 and a foiled plan to attack U.S. targets in Singapore about a year later were bin Laden initiatives. His testimony was the first public acknowledgement by a senior member of the group that it had ties to bin Laden’s al Qaeda organization. Bafana gave a detailed account of how attack plans were relayed from bin Laden to Southeast Asia and how Bafana and other operatives won approval for the attacks from Jemaah Islamiah’s leader, Abubakar Baasyir, an Indonesian cleric. Bafana said he had visited Afghanistan three times and met with bin Laden there. Full Story
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