🤑 11 Nov 2023: Al Jazeera > Al Jazeera: How did you become involved with Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), the armed group behind the Bali Bombings? - #Malaysia

By Aisyah Llewellyn

Published On 11 Nov 2023

11 Nov 2023

www.aljazeera.com

Umar Patek: In 1991, I was working in Malaysia and met Mukhlas [a senior JI figure who was sentenced to death and executed in 2008 for masterminding the Bali bombings] in Johor Bahru at the Lukman Hakim Islamic Boarding School.

I worked on a plantation in Malaysia, and would go to religious classes in the evening at the school. Then Mukhlas asked me to work at the school, so I moved in. After three months at the school, he offered me the chance to go to Pakistan. I wanted to study and he said I could study religion there.

I first went to Peshawar and then to Sadda, a tribal area in Pakistan which is close to the border with Afghanistan, where there was a military academy that trained people to be mujahideen [Islamic fighters]. From there I moved to a military academy in Torkham in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, I was in the same class as [Bali bomber] Ali Imron. In total, I was away for five years from 1991 to 1995.

We learned everything at the military academy to train us to be mujahideen, such as how to use weapons, map reading and bomb making. We practised blowing up bombs in areas where there were no people, like in caves or on hillsides, so that there would not be any fatalities.

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