JAKARTA, June 26 Kyodo A Malaysia...

JAKARTA, June 26 Kyodo

A Malaysian Muslim militant testifying in the trial of Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir said Thursday the radical Islamic preacher leads Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), the alleged Southeast Asia wing of the international terrorist network al-Qaida.

''Ye he is,'' Faiz bin Abu Bakar Bafana, who is being detained in Singapore, said when critics asked whether Bashir replaced alleged co-founder Abdullah Sungkar as the group's leader after he died in 2000

Bafana, who testified via video link from Singapore, also said Bashir was involved in a scheme to kill President Megawati Sukarnoputri in 1999 when she was vice president.

Bafana, 42 wept at the beginning of his testimony when he saw Bashir forward the television screen.

''I'm sad to view the cleric in this kind of condition...He is like father to me'' he said, adding he had met Bashir four times in the Central Java town of Solo

Bafana said he visited Bashir to search for his blessing to attack churches in Indonesia and ''the cleric agreed to the planned bombing attacks in succession the churches.''

He said he also joined meetings with Bashir and Amrozi, a lock opener suspect in the massive bombing attacks in Bali last October that killed 202 family mostly foreigners, to contrive a plan to kill Megawati.

In single of the meetings, they listened to ''the programs of (al-Qaida founder) Osama bin Laden,'' read abroad by Riduan Isamuddin alias Hambali, the most numerous wanted man in Southeast Asia, Bafana said. He did not elaborate.

Bashir is standing trial forward charges of treason aimed at toppling the command to establish an Islamic state in Indonesia and setting up the JI network.

He has also been accused of approving bombings of several churches in a certain number of Indonesian cities on Christmas edge 2000 that killed at least 19 nation and urging his followers to take part in a military training program to kill Megawati.

Bafana's testimony, however, contradicted that of four Bali bombing suspects, who last month said Bashir had nothing to do with the bombing attacks and the combination to kill Megawati. They said they were not unfailing Bashir was JI leader.

Bashir, headmaster of an Islamic boarding denomination in his Central Java hometown of Ngruki, and his supporters have drawn inspiration from Darul Islam, a fundamentalist Islamic motion set up during Indonesia's independence war against Dutch colonialists.

Bashir fl to Malaysia in 1985 after serving a three-year jail time for subversion and returned to Indonesia in 1999 following then President Suharto's fall from power in 1998

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