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| Southeast Asia |
| US asked for Bashir |
| 2005-01-13 |
| THE US convened a secret meeting with Indonesia's president Megawati Sukarnoputri in 2002 to pressure her to covertly hand over the militant Islamic preacher Abu Bakar Bashir. Fred Burks, a disaffected former US State Department interpreter who resigned late last year, told a Jakarta court yesterday that he had translated for Ms Megawati at the meeting in Jakarta. National Security Agency specialist Karen Brooks and US ambassador in Jakarta Ralph Boyce, accompanied President George W. Bush's secret envoy, whom Mr Burks didn't name, to the meeting. The testimony illustrates the efforts the US made to corner the market in terrorism intelligence following the September 11 attack, and the importance attached to the then little-known elderly preacher from central Java. Called by Bashir's defence counsel, Mr Burks testified that he sat in on the meeting to provide instantaneous translation for Ms Megawati. The special envoy was first introduced to Ms Megawati at the meeting in her private residence, Mr Burks said. The envoy then explained to Ms Megawati that intelligence from other terrorist operatives suggested Bashir was the puppet-master behind the Christmas Eve bombings of churches across Indonesia in 2000, which killed 19 people. Indonesia should capture the extremist preacher and give him to the US, Mr Burks recalled the envoy saying during the meeting, which was held just weeks before the Bali bombings. "Mainly, the request was made with the reason that this preacher was truly evil," Mr Burks said. The envoy used the term "render" for the nature of the request, which Mr Burks said he translated as secretly arrested and handed over to the nation concerned. President Megawati, who had met Mr Bush in person in the weeks after the September 11 attacks, declined the request. "Megawati took a breath, then she said: 'Very sorry, but I cannot fulfil your request'," Mr Burks said. She allegedly said that unlike another suspect, Omar al Faruq, Bashir was too famous to simply be captured and handed over. Mr Burks told the court he left the State Department because he had resented the insistence that he sign a security pledge. The prosecution attempted to undermine his testimony by forcing him to admit he had taken the drug ecstasy twice, years before the meeting. Bashir has been charged with inciting bomb attacks, including the 2002 Bali bombings which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, and the Marriott blast in Jakarta last year, which killed 12. |
| Posted by:tipper |