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U.S. Says It Told Indonesia of Plot by Terror Group
By JANE PERLEZ and RAYMOND BONNER
AKARTA, Indonesia, Oct. 15 — The United States repeatedly warned the Indonesian government in the weeks before the bomb blast that killed more than 180 people in Bali that a group linked to Al Qaeda was planning attacks to kill Americans and other Westerners, Bush administration officials said today.
The American ambassador, Ralph C. Boyce, delivered the latest warning to President Megawati Sukarnoputri and her top advisers just a day before the bombing and gave her a deadline of Oct. 24 to act, the officials said.
The various warnings contained no details about where and when attacks might occur, they said. But Washington took the likelihood of an attack seriously, basing its judgment on Central Intelligence Agency questioning of a Qaeda operative, senior American officials said.
The operative, Omar al-Faruq, was detained in central Java in June and was turned over to the Americans but only started talking early in September.
American officials reacted to his warnings about terrorist actions by shutting their embassies in Jakarta and some other capitals around the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The officials said that because planning for attacks was made several months beforehand, Mr. Faruq had given what appeared to be credible information about assaults planned for Indonesia.
Indonesian officials had no comment tonight, but American officials said they had reacted before this weekend largely with demands for more concrete evidence of a terrorist plot and Qaeda activity. Since the weekend bombing, senior Indonesian officials have conceded for the first time that groups linked to Al Qaeda are active in their country, although President Megawati has not said so.
In its warnings to Indonesia, the United States said an attack would not necessarily have an official American site as its target, but perhaps one known to attract American civilians, a senior American official said.
"We told them: `Wrap it up. Block it. Demonstrate that you are serious about eliminating the threat against us,' " the official said, declining to be any more specific about what action was expected.
If the government did not act by the time President Megawati was to see Mr. Bush at a meeting in Mexico in late October, the Indonesian leader was told, the United States planned to send a public signal that Indonesia was a terrorist haven by ordering all but the most essential American diplomats home, the official said.
In the aftermath of the Bali bombing, that is now happening. About 350 Americans connected with the United States Embassy — about 100 diplomats and the families of all diplomats — were ordered to leave the country by Friday, a State Department officer said.
About 100 American diplomats are to remain at the embassy in downtown Jakarta, which is heavily guarded and surrounded by new concrete barricades. Ambassador Boyce told departing diplomats at an outdoor meeting in the embassy courtyard today that their return would depend entirely on Indonesian government action to decrease the threat to Americans here.
American officials voiced concern that even in the face of the Bali attack, President Megawati lacked the resolve to take action against militant Islamic groups. She heads the world's most populous Muslim country but has a famously passive style and has been reluctant to cross her vice president, Hamzah Haz, and other prominent supporters of the groups.
In an effort to embolden her, and to convince her ministers of the terrorist threat, the United States invited Indonesian intelligence and police officials to interview Mr. Faruq. They were still interviewing him on Saturday night when the attack occurred, two American officials said.
One of the best-known Islamic groups, Laskar Jihad, announced today that it was disbanding. In a statement, it declared that its work in the province of Maluku, where its fighters had clashed with Christians, was completed.
It is not clear what role, if any, was played by the Indonesian government, which had no comment on the statement. An American official said that it was not clear what Laskar Jihad's intentions were and that the announcement needed "more study."
U.S. Says It Told Indonesia of Plot by Terror Group
(Page 2 of 2)
The leader of Laskar Jihad, Jafar Umar Thalib, was arrested in the spring and is currently on trial on charges of inciting violence in Maluku. There has been considerable debate among Western intelligence officials about whether Laskar Jihad has been used as a front for Al Qaeda in Indonesia.
It is more important to the United States, American officials said, that Indonesia act to break up Jemaah Islamiyah, or Islamic Community, a group described in detail by Mr. Faruq.
In particular, Washington would like the government to arrest Abu Bakar Bashir, the group's leader and intellectual inspiration.
Jemaah Islamiyah has long advanced the idea of an Islamic state in Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia. A few years ago, according to Western and Asian intelligence officials, Jemaah Islamiyah developed links and pooled resources with Al Qaeda.
Mr. Bashir, 64, the principal of an Islamic boys' boarding school in central Java, was described by Mr. Faruq as providing money, explosives and operatives for several terrorist acts, including an plan to blow up the American embassies here and in Malaysia, the officials said.
Immediately after the Saturday night bombing, Mr. Bashir blamed the deaths on the "arrogance" of the United States. In an apparent taunt to the central authorities to arrest him, Mr. Bashir said today that he would travel to Jakarta Wednesday to appear in court in a defamation suit he has brought against Time magazine over a recent article about reported Qaeda activity in Indonesia.
At the scene of the Bali attack, criminal investigators, who include specialists from Australia and F.B.I. officials, found what could be a key piece of evidence, a Western security official said.
The engine block of a Kijang vehicle, a popular Indonesian-made car, was found among the debris, the official said.
The car was probably a rental vehicle, and if a serial number can be found on the engine block, the investigators will have a useful clue, the official said.
The explosion on Saturday night was caused by a car bomb using C4, a powerful plastic explosive that is manufactured in the United States and used by military forces around the world, he said. The C4 was used, he said, to set off a homemade bomb made of ammonium nitrate or TNT.
Work at the site of the bombing was made more difficult, officials familiar with the work said, because the wreckage was not properly cordoned off and experts found the ruins trampled — and evidence therefore destroyed — before they arrived.
So far, the Western security official said, it appears that a relatively small bomb went off in a bar near Sari's disco just moments before the huge explosion. About the same time, a man tried to hurl a bomb near the office of the honorary United States consul some miles away. The man ended up burning himself and may provide clues on the disco bombing, the security official said.
While Bush administration officials remain unconvinced that President Megawati will take serious action to reduce the terrorist threat, a leading Indonesian analyst said he believed that she would have no choice. "Maybe at last she might do it because her survival is at stake," said Yusuf Wanandi, the director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a critic of President Megawati. "The economy will go down the drain if she does not act."
An estimated 40 million of Indonesia's 220 million people are unemployed. Foreign and domestic investment have fallen dramatically in the last year because of shaky security and are now expected to dry up.
The public in Indonesia, a vast majority of whom are moderate Muslims, has expressed shocked at the violence on Saturday. But there has also been widespread criticism of the United States.
Callers to a radio talk show on Monday said Americans must take the blame for the calamity, although by far most of the foreigners who died in the blaze were Australians, followed by Britons and Germans.
The American Embassy said today that it was believed that two Americans died in the explosion. Three Americans are missing.
President Megawati has remained largely silent since Saturday night. She is part Balinese and has visited the grisly scene in the town of Kuta, which she told aides she knew well.
But she declined to talk on television about the horrors of what she had seen or to galvanize a sense of outrage. She left it to her defense minister, Matori Abdul Jalil, to emerge from a cabinet meeting on Monday and declare for the first time that "Al Qaeda is here" in Indonesia.
By JANE PERLEZ and RAYMOND BONNER
AKARTA, Indonesia, Oct. 15 — The United States repeatedly warned the Indonesian government in the weeks before the bomb blast that killed more than 180 people in Bali that a group linked to Al Qaeda was planning attacks to kill Americans and other Westerners, Bush administration officials said today.
The American ambassador, Ralph C. Boyce, delivered the latest warning to President Megawati Sukarnoputri and her top advisers just a day before the bombing and gave her a deadline of Oct. 24 to act, the officials said.
The various warnings contained no details about where and when attacks might occur, they said. But Washington took the likelihood of an attack seriously, basing its judgment on Central Intelligence Agency questioning of a Qaeda operative, senior American officials said.
The operative, Omar al-Faruq, was detained in central Java in June and was turned over to the Americans but only started talking early in September.
American officials reacted to his warnings about terrorist actions by shutting their embassies in Jakarta and some other capitals around the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The officials said that because planning for attacks was made several months beforehand, Mr. Faruq had given what appeared to be credible information about assaults planned for Indonesia.
Indonesian officials had no comment tonight, but American officials said they had reacted before this weekend largely with demands for more concrete evidence of a terrorist plot and Qaeda activity. Since the weekend bombing, senior Indonesian officials have conceded for the first time that groups linked to Al Qaeda are active in their country, although President Megawati has not said so.
In its warnings to Indonesia, the United States said an attack would not necessarily have an official American site as its target, but perhaps one known to attract American civilians, a senior American official said.
"We told them: `Wrap it up. Block it. Demonstrate that you are serious about eliminating the threat against us,' " the official said, declining to be any more specific about what action was expected.
If the government did not act by the time President Megawati was to see Mr. Bush at a meeting in Mexico in late October, the Indonesian leader was told, the United States planned to send a public signal that Indonesia was a terrorist haven by ordering all but the most essential American diplomats home, the official said.
In the aftermath of the Bali bombing, that is now happening. About 350 Americans connected with the United States Embassy — about 100 diplomats and the families of all diplomats — were ordered to leave the country by Friday, a State Department officer said.
About 100 American diplomats are to remain at the embassy in downtown Jakarta, which is heavily guarded and surrounded by new concrete barricades. Ambassador Boyce told departing diplomats at an outdoor meeting in the embassy courtyard today that their return would depend entirely on Indonesian government action to decrease the threat to Americans here.
American officials voiced concern that even in the face of the Bali attack, President Megawati lacked the resolve to take action against militant Islamic groups. She heads the world's most populous Muslim country but has a famously passive style and has been reluctant to cross her vice president, Hamzah Haz, and other prominent supporters of the groups.
In an effort to embolden her, and to convince her ministers of the terrorist threat, the United States invited Indonesian intelligence and police officials to interview Mr. Faruq. They were still interviewing him on Saturday night when the attack occurred, two American officials said.
One of the best-known Islamic groups, Laskar Jihad, announced today that it was disbanding. In a statement, it declared that its work in the province of Maluku, where its fighters had clashed with Christians, was completed.
It is not clear what role, if any, was played by the Indonesian government, which had no comment on the statement. An American official said that it was not clear what Laskar Jihad's intentions were and that the announcement needed "more study."
U.S. Says It Told Indonesia of Plot by Terror Group
(Page 2 of 2)
The leader of Laskar Jihad, Jafar Umar Thalib, was arrested in the spring and is currently on trial on charges of inciting violence in Maluku. There has been considerable debate among Western intelligence officials about whether Laskar Jihad has been used as a front for Al Qaeda in Indonesia.
It is more important to the United States, American officials said, that Indonesia act to break up Jemaah Islamiyah, or Islamic Community, a group described in detail by Mr. Faruq.
In particular, Washington would like the government to arrest Abu Bakar Bashir, the group's leader and intellectual inspiration.
Jemaah Islamiyah has long advanced the idea of an Islamic state in Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia. A few years ago, according to Western and Asian intelligence officials, Jemaah Islamiyah developed links and pooled resources with Al Qaeda.
Mr. Bashir, 64, the principal of an Islamic boys' boarding school in central Java, was described by Mr. Faruq as providing money, explosives and operatives for several terrorist acts, including an plan to blow up the American embassies here and in Malaysia, the officials said.
Immediately after the Saturday night bombing, Mr. Bashir blamed the deaths on the "arrogance" of the United States. In an apparent taunt to the central authorities to arrest him, Mr. Bashir said today that he would travel to Jakarta Wednesday to appear in court in a defamation suit he has brought against Time magazine over a recent article about reported Qaeda activity in Indonesia.
At the scene of the Bali attack, criminal investigators, who include specialists from Australia and F.B.I. officials, found what could be a key piece of evidence, a Western security official said.
The engine block of a Kijang vehicle, a popular Indonesian-made car, was found among the debris, the official said.
The car was probably a rental vehicle, and if a serial number can be found on the engine block, the investigators will have a useful clue, the official said.
The explosion on Saturday night was caused by a car bomb using C4, a powerful plastic explosive that is manufactured in the United States and used by military forces around the world, he said. The C4 was used, he said, to set off a homemade bomb made of ammonium nitrate or TNT.
Work at the site of the bombing was made more difficult, officials familiar with the work said, because the wreckage was not properly cordoned off and experts found the ruins trampled — and evidence therefore destroyed — before they arrived.
So far, the Western security official said, it appears that a relatively small bomb went off in a bar near Sari's disco just moments before the huge explosion. About the same time, a man tried to hurl a bomb near the office of the honorary United States consul some miles away. The man ended up burning himself and may provide clues on the disco bombing, the security official said.
While Bush administration officials remain unconvinced that President Megawati will take serious action to reduce the terrorist threat, a leading Indonesian analyst said he believed that she would have no choice. "Maybe at last she might do it because her survival is at stake," said Yusuf Wanandi, the director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a critic of President Megawati. "The economy will go down the drain if she does not act."
An estimated 40 million of Indonesia's 220 million people are unemployed. Foreign and domestic investment have fallen dramatically in the last year because of shaky security and are now expected to dry up.
The public in Indonesia, a vast majority of whom are moderate Muslims, has expressed shocked at the violence on Saturday. But there has also been widespread criticism of the United States.
Callers to a radio talk show on Monday said Americans must take the blame for the calamity, although by far most of the foreigners who died in the blaze were Australians, followed by Britons and Germans.
The American Embassy said today that it was believed that two Americans died in the explosion. Three Americans are missing.
President Megawati has remained largely silent since Saturday night. She is part Balinese and has visited the grisly scene in the town of Kuta, which she told aides she knew well.
But she declined to talk on television about the horrors of what she had seen or to galvanize a sense of outrage. She left it to her defense minister, Matori Abdul Jalil, to emerge from a cabinet meeting on Monday and declare for the first time that "Al Qaeda is here" in Indonesia.
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