Evidence from two self-confessed bombers has mapped out a sinister trail from the peace of a village and the piety of a rural school to the carnage of the Bali massacre.

Each new link that falls into place in the investigation of the Bali blast which killed more than 190 people leads back to the village, the school and relationships developed by Indonesians living in exile in Malaysia.

At least four of the main characters so far identified as central to the probe share the Malaysian connection, a bitter pill for the Dr Mahathir Mohamad-led government.

It was in Malaysia that the two who have admitted involvement in the Bali attack, Amrozi ( left ) and Imam Samudra, came in contact with people and projects linked to the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) terrorist organisation.

JI was allegedly being nurtured by two of their countrymen, Muslim clerics Riduan Isamuddin, alias Hambali, and Abu Bakar Bashir, who had fled the Indonesia of former dictator Suharto, seen by fundamentalists as an oppressor of Islam.

Hambali arrived in Malaysia in 1985, left to fight in the anti-Soviet campaign in Afghanistan from 1987 until 1991, and returned to settle in the quiet village of Sungai Manggis about an hour's drive from the capital Kuala Lumpur.

Isolated religious school

There he and fellow villager Bashir built the JI organisation into a terrorist network inspired by what Hambali had learnt from Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, says security analyst Rohan Gunaratna, author of Inside al-Qaeda .

Imam Samudra, described as a leading figure in the Bali bombing, told Indonesian police this week he was a neighbour of Hambali's in Malaysia.

Amrozi, a self-confessed lower-level operative, attended a religious school run by Bashir, Luqmanul Hakiem, near Ulu Tiram in Johor.

The isolated school, set among palm oil plantations, was closed down by Malaysia in January, but by then the key Indonesian suspects had returned home after the fall of Suharto in 1998.

Bashir ( photo ), Samudra and Amrozi are now all in detention, with Bashir held on allegations of involvement in a series of bombings of Indonesian churches on Christmas Eve 2000. Hambali is at large.

Some analysts have suggested that suppression under Suharto gave rise to the militancy which grew among Indonesian exiles in the Malaysian village and school and exploded violently in Bali.

Passive role

But Gunaratna, dismisses this. "It is a fact that Suharto was hard and these people left Indonesia and developed the organisation outside.

"But it was not a response to his oppression. I believe in any case these people would have developed this kind of structure because al-Qaeda is a very violent organisation and infected groups like JI.

"Malaysia's role was a passive one, not active. It was Indonesians who developed JI in Malaysia. All key leaders of JI are Indonesians."

That is of little comfort in a country which winces every time Malaysia is mentioned in connection with the Bali killers. AFP