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Fainting spell stalls cleric interrogation
SOLO, Indonesia (CNN) -- The scheduled police interrogation of Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, in relation to a series of bomb attacks several years ago, may be cancelled after he fainted during a news conference and was rushed to hospital. Australia and the United States have both named Ba'asyir's Jemaah Islamiya fundamentalist Islamic group as a possible suspect for the Bali bombings, however at this stage police are not planning to question him on the matter. "My health is declining, I am tired and old, but I have to face all of this," The Associated Press reported Ba'asyir to have said. "I have already bought a train ticket to Jakarta. If I am feeling well, I will come for the investigation." Ba'asyir also warned reporters he was being sacrificed to ease global pressure on Indonesia, according to AP. He put the blame for the bomb attacks on "foreign parties", including the United States. The attorney for Abu Bakar Ba'asyir had scheduled the conference to deny his client was linked to terrorism and announce Ba'asyir would travel by train to Jakarta Saturday for police questioning. However, during Friday's news conference at around 2 p.m. (2 a.m. EDT), Ba'asyir appeared to collapse and then recover, but fainted again, according to his lawyer, and was taken to a hospital in the central Javanese town of Solo. Hospital officials said the Islamic cleric had "lung problems" and would likely be in hospital until Sunday. They would not elaborate on his condition. Indonesia's top security minister, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said Thursday there was no indication yet of JI's involvement in the Bali attacks. "Please, do not be too hasty in accusing the Jemaah Islamiya of being behind the October 12 bombing," the official Antara news agency reports Yudhoyono saying. "It wouldn't be right to say such and such an organization were involved," he said. Hasty accusationsYudhoyono said the process of investigation should first be allowed to take its natural course, without being disrupted by hasty accusations. National police chief General Da'i Bachtiar said the decision to summon Ba'asyir followed interrogation of alleged al Qaeda operative Omar al Faruq, apparently at Bagram air base in Afghanistan. Faruq, a Kuwaiti-born al Qaeda operative, was arrested by Indonesian authorities in June and handed over to U.S. officials before being interrogated by the CIA. Faruq reportedly is the one who initially told officials Ba'asyir was linked to Jemaah Islamiya. Ba'asyir then admitted he heads the group. But Ba'asyir has denied the Islamic organization has any ties to al Qaeda, and this week denied his group's involvement in the Bali bombings. Anti-terrorism decreeThe summons of Ba'asyir comes as President Megawati Sukarnoputri gained parliamentary support for a presidential anti-terrorism decree, which is due to be issued later Friday. Megawati's government has had difficulty in the past passing tough anti-terror laws because of discord in the Cabinet. The new measures will give police greater powers to tap phone lines and to detain people. The concern is that any new security laws would erase the freedoms that Indonesians had just begun to enjoy after years of authoritarian rule under former President Suharto. -- CNN Correspondents Atika Shubert, Mike Chinoy and David Ensor contributed to this report.
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