http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/bin-laden-vision-terrorist-tells-of-bombers -dream/2006/06/04/1149359612981.html Bin Laden vision: terrorist tells of bomber's dream Marian Wilkinson June 5, 2006
ONE of the men who carried out the first Bali bombing dreamt that he flew to Afghanistan and spoke with Osama bin Laden about the mission shortly before being sent out to blow himself up in the attack, one of the chief conspirators says. The account of the bizarre dream is contained in a previously unpublished manuscript written by the Jemaah Islamiah leader, Mukhlas, who is awaiting execution in Indonesia for his part in organising the Bali bombing, in which 202 people died. The manuscript attempts to present a religious and moral defence of the Bali bombings as retaliation for the US-led war in Afghanistan. It explicitly rules out that the bombers targeted the Sari Club or Paddy's Bar "because they were places of immorality". Mukhlas said his suicide bomber told him about his dream after Mukhlas had instructed him on the operation. The young man dreamt he was flying to Mecca in Saudi Arabia and about to land when he heard a voice in the sky ordering him to continue to Afghanistan, where he was embraced by bin Laden and "touched cheeks with him". Bin Laden asked him, "Do you want to conduct a suicide bomb operation?" and he answered, "Yes, God willing". Bin Laden then directed him to bathe "in a beautiful river with clear water where many mujahideen were bathing" and to put on clean clothes. Mukhlas recruited two suicide bombers, known by their first names, Iqbal and Feri, for the Bali operation. They struck the Sari Club and Paddy's Bar, where 88 Australians died. Mukhlas does not say which one of them told him about the dream but indicates he took it as reassurance of "our holy and noble mission". "After I heard his dream I said to him, 'Glad news my brother . God willing glad news, your dream, God willing, is a True Dream'." Extracts from Mukhlas's manuscript, called The Bali Bomb Jihad: A Defence are included in a new book, Voices of Islam in South-East Asia: A Contemporary Sourcebook, edited by the Australian academics Greg Fealy and Virginia Hooker, which has just been published. While Mukhlas wrote his account in 2003, Dr Fealy said many of its details have not previously seen the light of day. Significantly, for Australian and Indonesian intelligence, Mukhlas says his motivation for the bombing was as a retaliation for the US-led invasion of Afghanistan after September 11. The invasion, which Australia joined, toppled the Taliban government and forced al-Qaeda's leaders, including bin Laden, into hiding. Like other Jemaah Islamiah leaders, Mukhlas had trained in Afghanistan with al-Qaeda. In his manuscript he specifically compares the size of the explosion at the Sari Club with the US bombs dropped on Afghanistan. "The explosive at SC [Sari Club] weighed about one tonne . The terrific power of one tonne of TNT dropped from the sky is unimaginable, and it wasn't just once, but hundreds or thousands of times. Where is there greater brutality than that? Such a brutal attack cannot be allowed to pass just like that; it must be responded to." Mukhlas then tries to explain why, under Islamic law, it is acceptable to kill innocent civilians in response to the bombing in Afghanistan. In the end, he falls back on rhetoric: "We say that if you have acknowledged that our acts were part of jihad, then hasn't every jihad operation throughout history always run the risk of sacrificing innocent civilians?" [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Protect your PC from spy ware with award winning anti spy technology. 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