An Indonesian terrorism suspect known as "Demolition Man" for his expertise with explosives has told interrogators he used common household items, including a rice ladle and a kitchen scale, to build the massive bomb that ripped apart nightclubs on the tourist island of Bali.
After more than a month of painstaking work, Umar Patek stashed the 700kg bomb in four filing cabinets installed in a van along with a vest bomb that ripped apart two nightclubs on October 12, 2002, killing 202 people, including 88 Australians, according to documents detailing his interrogation.
Most victims were foreign tourists.
Patek goes on trial in the West Jakarta District Court on Monday for his alleged role in the Bali bombings and other alleged acts of terrorism following a nine-year flight from justice that took him from Indonesia to the Philippines to Pakistan, reportedly in pursuit of more terrorism opportunities.
The 45-year-old Indonesian was finally caught in January 2011 in the same Pakistani town where US Navy Seals would kill Osama bin Laden just a few months later. Patek, Southeast Asia's most notorious bombmaking suspect, was hiding out in a second-floor room of a house in Abbottabad, a $US1 million bounty on his head, when Pakistani security forces, acting on a tip from the CIA, burst in.
After a firefight that left Patek wounded, he was captured and extradited to Indonesia.
His capture was seen as a yardstick of the successes that Asian security forces, with US help, have achieved against Jemaah Islamiah, the al-Qaeda-linked regional terror group blamed for the Bali bombings and several other attacks in Indonesia. All its other leaders have been executed, killed by security forces, or are on death row.
Prosecutors earlier this week handed over a 50-page indictment against Patek over a string of terrorism offences dating back more than a decade.
The 41-year-old will face six charges, but won't be charged with terrorism offences over the 2002 attacks because Indonesia's tough anti-terrorism laws, introduced in 2003, cannot be applied retrospectively.
He will, however, be charged with mass murder over the Bali bombings.
The indictment also accuses Patek of providing explosives for a string of Christmas Eve attacks on churches in 2000 that claimed 19 lives.
If found guilty of the murder charges he could be sentenced to death.
He will also face terrorism charges over a number of other alleged offences.
The indictment lists charges of conspiracy to commit terrorism, harbouring information on terrorism, possession of explosives and firearms, as well as two counts of document fraud.
Interviews with intelligence officials in Indonesia and the Philippines, the indictment, an interrogation report and other documents reveal the peripatetic life Patek led after the Bali attacks as he ranged widely and freely, often without passing through immigration checks, while allegedly passing along his bomb-making skills to other terrorists. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorised to discuss intelligence matters with reporters.
Patek, whose real name is Hisyam bin Alizein, is the son of a goat meat trader. He went to computer school and learned English before being recruited into Jemaah Islamiah by Dulmatin, a fellow militant who was gunned down by Indonesian police in March 2010.
After his arrest, Patek told his interrogators that he learned to make bombs during a 1991-1994 stint at a militant academy in Pakistan's Sadda province, and later in Turkhom, Afghanistan, where bomb-making courses ranged "from basic to very difficult."
The Bali bomb was made using common household tools, he said, including a rice ladle and a small weighing machine commonly used in kitchens or grocery stores. Dulmatin made the electronic circuit board, he said. It took more than a month to build the bomb, and its components were stashed in four filing cabinets installed inside a van.
Just before midnight on October 12, 2002, the terrorists drove the van to Bali's Kuta district and detonated the bomb. Patek had left Bali a few days earlier. His involvement ended after making the bomb.
Afterward, officials said, Patek and Dulmatin went to the Philippines and allegedly joined forces with the local extremist group Abu Sayyaf, spending the next several years training militants and plotting attacks, including against US troops in the Philippines.
Meanwhile, three of the masterminds of the Bali attacks - Imam Samudra, and brothers Amrozi Nurhasyim and Ali Ghufron - were tried and executed.
Patek's trial on Monday comes after the conviction last year of high-profile JI co-founder and the spiritual leader of the jihadist movement in Indonesia, Abu Bakar Bashir, following the discovery of a secret paramilitary training camp in Aceh.
The bespectacled cleric served almost 26 months behind bars for conspiracy over the 2002 Bali bombings but that conviction was later overturned.
The trial, which will be conducted amid heavy security, is expected to run until late May or early June.
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