Trial set for Bali bombing suspect

By Kathy Quiano-Castro, CNN

February 11, 2012 -- Updated 1259 GMT (2059 HKT)

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Umar Patek has been one of Indonesia's most wanted terrorists
• Patek was seized in the same Pakistani city where bin Laden was killed
• Indonesian authorities have convicted hundreds since the 2002 bombing.

Jakarta, Indonesia (CNN) -- A high-profile terrorism trial begins in Jakarta on Monday against an Indonesian man accused of assembling the bombs used in the 2002 Bali attack.
Umar Patek faces charges of premeditated mass murder and a maximum penalty of death if found guilty. The bombings on the Indonesian resort island of Bali killed 202 people, including foreign tourists.
Patek also is expected to be charged for his alleged involvement in church bombings in 2000.
The 44-year-old Patek was one of Indonesia's most wanted terrorists, with a $1 million bounty on his head from the U.S. government's Rewards for Justice program.
After almost a decade on the run, Patek was arrested in January 25, 2011, in Abottabad, Pakistan. A few months after his capture, U.S. Navy Seals found and killed al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in the Pakistani city.
Patek was extradited to Indonesia in August.
Indonesian authorities say Patek admitted his role in the Bali attacks to investigators, saying he helped assemble the explosives.
Noor Huda Ismail, an Indonesian terrorism expert, told CNN that Patek's detention and trial "should go beyond the Bali bombings."
"Umar Patek is a gold mine of information for security authorities, not only here in Indonesia, but also in Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines. He has valuable information about the extent of the network, who are the people moving from one place to another and how they're doing it," Ismaill said.
Ismail says Patek may also give clues on the ties between the region's militants and international terror networks like al Qaeda.
"It may be no coincidence that Patek was found in the same village where bin Laden was living," Ismail said.
Patek is one of the last figures associated with a splinter group of the terror network Jemaah Islamiyah, responsible for the Bali bombings and other major attacks on Indonesian soil.
Many in that group, like Patek, trained and fought in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the early 1990s and were deeply influenced by bin Laden's teachings.
Three of the masterminds of the Bali bombings -- Imam Samudra, Amrozi bin Nurhasyim and Ali Ghufron -- were executed in 2008.
Patek fled to Mindanao in the southern Philippines with several other Indonesian militants. One of them was Dulmatin, another former JI member, who returned to Indonesia and helped set up a military-style training camp in province of Aceh. He was killed in a police raid, just outside Jakarta in October 2010.
Patek is also charged for failing to disclose knowledge he had about the militant training camp. According to Ismail, Patek refused an offer to train at the camp and instead chose to leave for Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Indonesian authorities have tried and convicted hundreds of terrorists since the 2002 bombing. The arrests of senior militants with combat experience have weakened the terror network and its capability to launch major attacks.
According to recent reports by the International Crisis Group, the terror threat in the country remains but has shifted to attacks on Indonesian authorities, with smaller groups or radicalized individuals targeting the police.