(3 of 6)
--In a separate regional intelligence report obtained by TIME, a high-ranking JI member now in custody told investigators that he hosted Zacarias Moussaoui--currently on trial in the U.S. for conspiring in the Sept. 11 attacks--during Moussaoui's swing through Malaysia in 2000. According to the source, Moussaoui went by the alias "John" and told the operative to buy four tons of fertilizer, presumably to build a bomb. Moussaoui left the country before giving any further instructions on what to do with the fertilizer.
--Acting as an al-Qaeda operative, al-Faruq, the CIA report says, was "the mastermind behind all the Christmas 2000 bombings in Indonesia"--a wave of attacks on Christian churches--which killed 18 and injured more than 100. Earlier that year, al-Faruq "cased the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta to develop a plan to destroy the embassy with a large car bomb." He abandoned the plan when the U.S. hardened the building's security after a separate, credible threat in October 2000.
--Increasing numbers of al-Qaeda operatives are moving into Southeast Asia. In May, according to a regional report, six "Middle Eastern terrorists" slipped into Indonesia. Counterterrorism officials say that, based on information provided by al-Faruq, the U.S. believes Southeast Asia now has the world's highest concentration of al-Qaeda operatives outside Afghanistan and Pakistan.
--Al-Faruq told the CIA that some of al-Qaeda's operations in the region were funded through a branch of al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, an international charity based in Saudi Arabia, with offices in several Islamic countries. According to one regional intel memo, Faruq told his interrogators "money was laundered through the foundation by donors from the Middle East." Government sources tell TIME that U.S. investigators believe the charity is a "significant" source of funding for terrorist groups associated with al-Qaeda in Southeast Asia. Counterterrorism officials are also investigating possible links between al-Qaeda and top al-Haramain officials in Saudi Arabia.
What does it all mean? Al-Faruq's confession serves as a reminder that even after losing its base in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda is actively forging and reconstituting ties with violent extremists around the world who are receptive to bin Laden's cause. "They are bulking up," says a U.S. Administration official. "We don't have our arms around them yet."
To a sprawling organization like al-Qaeda, Omar al-Faruq was the ideal operative, a man whose networking skills were at least as impressive as his appetite for destruction. Born in Kuwait on May 24, 1971, he got his first taste of jihad in the early 1990s when he trained at an al-Qaeda camp in Khaldan, Afghanistan. He spent three years at the camp, becoming close to both al-Mughira al Gaza'iri, the camp's leader, and senior bin Laden associate Abu Zubaydah. In 1995, at Abu Zubaydah's suggestion, al-Faruq procured a fake passport and traveled with al-Mughira to the Philippines. There he joined Camp Abubakar, a terrorist-training facility run by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a Philippine-based rebel group fighting for independence from Manila. According to a regional intelligence report, al-Faruq, while in the Philippines, unsuccessfully tried to enter flight school, in the hopes of commandeering a commercial plane and blowing it up.