Jakarta, July 03: Dozens of Muslim militants have crisscrossed Asia visiting terror training camps and learning how to use guns and make bombs, a member of an al-Qaeda-linked regional Islamic group testified today. The militants were being trained to wage a campaign of violence across Southeast Asia in an effort to topple the democratic government of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, and establish an Islamic state, said Ahmad Sajuli bin Abdurrahman. He was testifying via video link from Malaysia, where he is in prison, in the trial in Jakarta of Abu Bakar Bashir, the suspected head of the regional Islamic militant group Jemaah Islamiyah. Bashir is accused of authorizing a series of church bombings in 2000 that killed 19 people and of plotting to kill Indonesia's president.

Jemaah Islamiyah has also been accused of carrying out the October 12 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists.

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Like three detained militants who testified from Singapore last week, Abdurrahman told the court that Bashir, 64, was the head of Jemaah Islamiyah.

Witnesses in Indonesia have failed to implicate Bashir.
Abdurrahman said he was in charge of logistics within the Malaysian branch of Jemaah Islamiyah and had dispatched between 20 and 30 militants to the Southern Philippines and Afghanistan in the late 1990s. "They were trained how to fire guns and make bombs," he said.
Bureau Report