JAKARTA (Reuters) - A Saudi man gave funds to an Indonesian militant group which carried out suicide bomb attacks on two luxury hotels in Jakarta last year, prosecutors told an Indonesian court Wednesday.
The prosecutors accused Al Khelaiw Ali Abdullah, 55, of transferring 54 million rupiah (3,800 pounds) to a person who later passed on some of the money to a member of a regional militant group led by Noordin Mohammad Top.
They said Top and his group met and agreed to attack the JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels in Jakarta after receiving the money. Top was killed in a police shoot-out in September.
Abdullah says he is not guilty.
Top headed a violent wing of regional militant group Jemaah Islamiah. The group carried out simultaneous bomb attacks on the two luxury hotels in July 2009, killing 11 people and wounding 53, as well as several other bombings in Indonesia.
"The defendant has given assistance to perpetrators of terror attacks by giving or lending money or other assets," prosecutor Totok Bambang said in an indictment, which was translated into Arabic for Abdullah.
Abdullah faces between three and 15 years in jail.
"I am not a terrorist. I don't like violence," he told reporters before the trial.
Abdullah said he had never given any money to Syaifudin Zuhri, also known as Syaifudin Djaelani, one of the main organisers of the hotel attacks. He was killed in a raid in October.
"I am an old man and I am very sick. I came to Indonesia to find a cure for my sickness and to relax," Abdullah said in a written statement given to reporters before the trial.
Abdullah had made two trips to Indonesia since November 2008, prosecutors said. During those visits he met Dani Dwi Permana, the suicide bomber who detonated a bomb at the JW Marriott hotel, they said.
Jemaah Islamiah, which wants to create an Islamic state linking Muslim communities in Southeast Asia, was responsible for a string of attacks that killed hundreds of civilians, including the bombing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta in 2004, and of the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in 2003.
Tuesday, prosecutors told the court that an Indonesian man, Muhammad Jibriel Abdul Rahman, had raised money in Saudi Arabia to finance the 2009 hotel attacks.
Tito Karnavian, head of Indonesia's elite anti-terror detachment 88, told Reuters recently the possible flow of money from the Middle East to Indonesia to finance those bombings showed the connection between Indonesia's radical network and al Qaeda had been revived.
Police have previously said al Qaeda helped fund the 2002 Bali bombings and the 2003 JW Marriott bombing in Jakarta, which killed scores of Indonesians and Westerners.
(Writing by Olivia Rondonuwu; Editing by Sara Webb and Paul Tait)
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Defiant: Alleged militant Mohammad Jibriel Abdul Rahman gestures as he speaks to reporters from inside a holding cell after a hearing at a district court in Jakarta on Tuesday. Rahman, who was accused of flying to Saudi Arabia to raise money to finance the suicide attacks on two Jakarta hotels last year, said Tuesday that the case against him had been fabricated. AP/Irwin Fedriansyah
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