Local television station TV3 will air a special report on Friday night featuring the testimony of four Malaysians detained in Indonesia and their alleged links with regional terror network, Jemaah Islamiah (JI).

The programme, which the station showed trailers of yesterday, will be broadcast at 8.30pm.

The interviews are with Mohamad Nasir Abas, Amran Mansour, Jaafar Anwarul and Shamsul Bahri Hussein, all of whom were detained by Indonesian authorities after the October 2002 bombings in Bali which killed 202 people.

TV3 news and current affairs director Kamarulzaman Zainal said the interviews were conducted earlier this month in Indonesia.

"They were caught in Jakarta by Indonesian police after being tipped off by the police here," he said when contacted this afternoon.

Kamarulzaman said the four have confessed to involvement with JI and that they had prior knowledge of the Bali bombings which ripped through two popular nightclubs. They are said to have also admitted to acquaintance with other fugitive JI leaders.

Kamarulzaman said a short clip of an interview with one of the detainees will be shown tonight over TV3's Buletin Utama vernacular news programme at 8pm.

Malaysian mastermind

Previous news reports say Nasir was arrested in Jakarta in April 2003. He is said to be the brother-in-law of Mukhlas, a 43-year-old preacher who has been sentenced to death in Indonesia for masterminding the Bali bombings although he has denied a direct role in the attack.

Nasir is alleged to have replaced Riduan Isamuddin or Hambali as the JI operations chief. He is also alleged to be the head of the network's 'Mantiqi Three' cell which undertakes tactical operations in the Philippines, Brunei and Borneo.

Amran has been linked to both the Bali attack ( photo ) and the August 2003 bombing of the JW Marriot Hotel in Jakarta. A native of Pontian, Johor, he was arrested last month in the central Indonesian city of Surakarta.

He has been accused by Indonesian police of supplying bomb materials for the Marriot blast.

Amran, 39, reportedly co-owned a company in Johor, which was a front for JI operations, together with another alleged JI member, Abdul Nassir Anwarul. The latter was arrested by Malaysian police in January 2002 and is currently being held under the Internal Security Act (ISA) at the Kamunting Detention Centre in Perak, northern Malaysia.

No information is available on Jaafar and Shamsul. However, Jaafar's 18-year-old son, Abi Dzar is among five students detained under the ISA after being deported back from Pakistan where he was alleged to have participated in militant training.

Two other Malaysians implicated in the two Indonesian bombing tragedies remain at large. They are Dr Azahari Husin and Noordin Mohamad Top, both said to be expert explosive makers.