Al-Qaeda provided funds to the Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) group which perpetrated the Bali bombings last October, the alleged treasurer of the regional terror organization has told the Denpasar District court.

It was the most direct evidence yet linking Osama bin Laden's terror network to the attacks that killed 202 people, the daily Jakarta Post reported Friday.

"I never knew for sure where JI got its operational funds from. Yet, during a conversation the defendant mentioned that the al-Qaeda organization was one of JI's financial sources," the alleged JI treasurer, Wan Min bin Wan Mat, said in his testimony during the trial of Ali Gufron alias Mukhlas on Thursday.

It was not clear, however, whether the funds that went to the JI were spent on the bombings of two packed night clubs in the tourist resort of Kuta and the United States Consular office in the Bali capital of Denpasar on Oct. 12, 2002.

The Indonesian Police have accused JI of masterminding the bombings but said it had no evidence as to whether al-Qaeda was involved in the blasts, the most devastating since the attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, which were blamed on the international terror group.

Australia, with 88 of whose citizens were killed in the Bali bombings, has said al-Qaeda might be behind the attacks.

Wan Min, a former lecturer at a Malaysian technological university, was speaking via a video link from police detention in Malaysia.
 
(Xinhua News Agency August 1, 2003)