Oct 24 2002 – He has no car, no home telephone, no security – and his Muslim friends in Sydney believe Abu Bakar Bashir is incapable of engineering a terrorist attack.
Only three weeks before the Bali bombings that killed his fellow Australians, Sheik Amin Hady, Imam of the Tempe Mosque, dined at the home of the spiritual leader of the group suspected of the bombing, Jemaah Islamiyah.
The dinner, in mid-September, did not hint at the coming tragedy of the Bali bombings — and no one foresaw Bashir would soon be in hospital with charges of terrorism hanging over his head.
Bashir is to be arrested and questioned over a string of church bombings. He is also suspected of trying to assassinate Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri.
And, although Indonesian police have not yet said they will question him over the Kuta blast, he is regarded as a prime suspect.
Mr Hady yesterday recalled Bashir making a simple Asian meal for a small number of guests. Most were parents of Bashir’s pupils.
Bashir’s wife was at home but not present among the males.
Bashir told Mr Hady claims by al-Faruq to CIA interrogators naming him as the leader of terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah were fabricated — and the group did not even exist.
“I was talking to him as a friend,” Mr Hady said yesterday. “He said he had never met Omar Faruq. The point was that he can’t understand why people accuse him because he said: ‘I don’t know anything about it’.”
Bashir and Mr Hady talked about their families, but Bashir did not ask questions about Australia — or give any hint he knew an attack on Australians was imminent.
Bashir struck him as humble and passionate about Islam and teaching.
Mr Hady was in Indonesia as part of a study of traditional Islamic boarding schools.
It was the second time Mr Hady had met Bashir. The first time was about 1997 when Bashir visited Tempe Mosque with the late Jemaah Islamiyah founder Abdullah Sungkar, who gave a politically charged speech.
Mr Hady remembered Sungkar’s speech as “courageous”, revolving around how Australians should condemn the dictatorial Indonesian government of Suharto.
“The message was that he didn’t ask us to take up arms — rather we should express our concern that the regime was a dictator . . . and very much against Muslims,” he said.
This week Bashir collapsed on his way to answer police questioning — and his lawyers claim he is suffering respiratory problems and exhaustion.
Police say they will arrest him when he recovers.
Yesterday Bashir again denied knowing an alleged al-Qaeda operative who implicated him in the Kuta bombing. The cleric swore an oath in front of three Muslim leaders, denying he knows Omar al-Faruq, according to Bashir’s spokesman, Muzakir.
“I swear that I do not know Omar al-Faruq, have never ordered him to do anything and have never given him funds to do anything,” Muzakir quoted Bashir as saying from his hospital bed.
Police say they arrested Bashir after al-Faruq, who was detained in Indonesia in June and handed over to US authorities, told Indonesian investigators that Bashir was implicated in bomb plots.
But three weeks ago, in his modest dwelling within his Islamic school on the outskirts of Solo, Indonesia, Bashir spoke frankly to his guests about being a suspected terrorist.