Jakarta: A former student of an alleged Al Qaida commander flew to Saudi Arabia to raise money for suicide attacks on two Jakarta hotels that he hoped would be the biggest terrorism act since September 11, 2001, a prosecutor said Wednesday.
Chief Prosecutor Firman Syah made the allegation in opening his case in the South Jakarta District Court against Mohammad Jibriel Abdul Rahman, a flamboyant 25-year-old who once called himself the ‘Prince of Jihad' on his radical website.
Police arrested Rahman more than a month after the July 17, 2009, attacks on the J.W. Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels that killed seven and injured more than 50. He faces a maximum 15 years in prison if convicted of helping facilitate a terrorist act by concealing information.
Rahman, who came to court wearing a black shirt and jeans and flanked by more than a dozen men wearing black jackets emblazoned with "mujahideen", said he was innocent.
Weak case
"I think this case is fabricated. I didn't do anything wrong," Rahman said shortly before his trial began.
Defence lawyer Achmad Michdan said the case was weak and he will apply to a panel of three judges to dismiss it when the trial resumes next week.
Syah alleged that Rahman studied at an Islamic boarding school in Malaysia in 1998 when he first met Malaysian-born Noordin Top, an alleged terrorist mastermind blamed for a string of deadly bombings before he was shot dead in a police raid in September last year. In 1998, Top was a teacher at Rahman's school.
The indictment says Rahman met Top about a year before the hotel bombings. After that meeting, it says Rahman sent an email to his brother, Ahmad Isrofil Mardhotillah, who was in Saudi Arabia, saying, "I have met with N we talked for a long time in a car ... Preacher N needs 100 million."
Secret plan
While not detailing a plot, Rahman allegedly wrote of a secret plan that was "the biggest since the WTC" a reference to the World Trade Center twin towers that were brought down by hijacked airliners.
Rahman and another suspect in the bombings, Syaefudin Zuhri, then flew to Saudi Arabia to arrange terrorism financing, the indictment alleges. Zuhri was later killed in a police raid. The indictment did not specify how much money they raised and whether any reached Top.
Michdan said the prosecution case on the terrorism charge was weak because the email is the only evidence. "Even the prosecutors say this email is difficult to understand," he told reporters outside court.
Police killed nine suspects and arrested more than a dozen in the hotel bombing investigation. Rahman was only the third of 11 charged so far to go to trial.
The trials of Top's alleged driver, Amir Abdullah, and an alleged accomplice, Aris Susanto, began February 10.
