Islamic militant Faiz Fauzan is escorted into a news conference at police headquarters in Jakarta yesterday. (REUTERS)

JAKARTA • Indonesian police said yesterday they had arrested a key member of radical Islamist group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) who allegedly helped plot a suicide bombing on the resort island of Bali in 2005.

Faiz Fauzan, 28, who was paraded before the media at a press conference, was a close aide to the group’s fugitive alleged terror mastermind, Malaysian national Noordin Muhammad Top, a police spokesman said.

He was also an associate of Azahari Husin, another Malaysian national believed to have helped Noordin plan bombings which killed some 200 people, mostly tourists, in Bali in 2002, the spokesman said.

“The accused is suspected of involvement in the planning of the second Bali bombings and among others had met twice with Salik Firdaus, one of the suicide bombers,” said the spokesman, Abubakar Nataprawira.

“He also met with Azahari in June 2005, before the second Bali bombings.” Azahari was shot dead during a police raid on his hideout in Batu, East Java, in November 2005 as police across Southeast Asia struggled to crack down on the regional extremist group blamed for a string of terror attacks.

Analysts believe that while JI, which has been linked by security agencies to Al Qaeda, has generally lost interest in spectacular bombings targeting foreigners, Noordin heads a hardline faction that supports such attacks.

Indonesian authorities have come close to arresting him on at least two occasions but he remains at large.

Twenty people were killed in the suicide bombing of a restaurant area on Bali in 2005, the second deadly terror attack targeting foreigners on the popular resort in three years.

Spokesman Nataprawira said preliminary investigations showed that Fauzan, who is also known as Parmin, had become a member of JI in 1999 and had joined Noordin’s more extreme faction in 2004.

The press conference was the first public acknowledgement of his arrest. Police said he was detained at his home in Central Java on April 22.

Handcuffed and wearing a white shirt, he told reporters he was an associate of Noordin and Azahari but denied any involvement in the 2005 attack. “I did once join Noordin Top’s group, from the end of April 2005 to October 2005,” he said. But he added: “I knew nothing of the Bali bombings.”

He said Noordin had told his followers that it was an “obligation to conduct jihad against the United States.” Police said Fauzan was also plotting “cyberterror” with Noordin’s group and had translated sermons by Noordin and Middle Eastern clerics inciting Muslims to violence, which he had posted on the Internet.