JAKARTA, Nov 3: Suspect Abu Bakar Bashir is requiring police to meet three demands before he answers their questions, one of his lawyers said.

“He still wants the police to first meet his demands, otherwise he will not answer their questions,” lawyer Ahmad Khalid told AFP on Sunday

Bashir, detained at the Jakarta police hospital although doctors have pronounced him healthy, began on Saturday to submit to a police interrogation but refrained from answering anything but basic questions until his conditions were met.

He asked that police make a public apology to him, to the Muhammadiyah hospital in Solo and religious leaders, following his forced removal Monday from the central Java town to Jakarta.

Police should allow him to confront the alleged Al Qaeda operative, Omar al-Faruq, who has implicated the cleric in alleged terrorist operations in Indonesia, Bashir’s lawyer said. Al-Faruq is in US custody.

Police said Bashir was suspected in a string of Indonesian church bombings in 2000 as well as a plot to assassinate Megawati Sukarnoputri before she became president.

His third demand was for police to suspend his detention.

Bashir gave only personal information about his name, age and occupation on Saturday, ignoring a list of some 50 questions by the team of 10 police detectives conducting the interrogation.

Australia said Sunday that Bashir had visited there 11 times before 1998 to spread the influence of the group.—AFP