For almost two decades this man has been on the front line, training Muslim militants for war. From Pakistan, to Afghanistan to the Philippines, to here in Indonesia, Malaysian national Nasir Abas has taught recruits to kill in the defence of Islam. As a top-ranking member of Jemaah Islamiah, or JI, he helped train hundreds of militants, including those responsible for the Bali bombings and other attacks across Indonesia.
NASIR ABAS: My specialise is weaponry so I train people to use the gun.
REPORTER: To shoot? To shoot who?
NASIR ABAS: Yeah, to shoot inside the battlefield against the armed troops, yeah, which are attacking or assault the camp.
He designed this military style academy in the Philippines jungle, where a Muslim insurgency has claimed tens of thousands of lives. The reward for dreaming it up was to be allowed to make it happen.
NASIR ABAS: There is a dormitory for the military academy student. There is a depot here, weapons and ammunition. There is a dormitory for instructors, canteen, kitchen, yeah, short-course student dormitory. There is a soccer field, there is a firing range, yeah. So it is a complete training camp inside the jungle.
Nasir Abas shows me a similar camp where he was a trainer on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border.
NASIR ABAS: So this is the location of military academy. Most of them was Afghanis.
REPORTER: There were a lot of Indonesians, though.
NASIR ABAS: Yes.
REPORTER: And those that you trained that were involved in the Bali bomb?
NASIR ABAS: Yes, like Ali Imron. Imam Samudra also was here.
It was the devastating Bali bomb attack in 2002 that brought Jemaah Islamiah to the attention of the world. It was also what caused Nasir Abas to turn against the organisation to which he had devoted decades of his life. He says his recruits misused both the knowledge he gave them and the true meaning of Islam by killing innocents.
NASIR ABAS: What they did in the Bali, that is not a battlefield. They are killing peoples. I just say that it is not a battlefield, they are killing people, yeah.
His arrest in 2003, not long after the Bali bomb, was a major breakthrough for Indonesian authorities. He now walks free because he's helping police to track down other members of Jemaah Islamiah. He agreed to meet with Dateline, but locations were carefully chosen. This valuable asset is closely guarded.
SIDNEY JONES, SOUTH EAST ASIA PROJECT DIRECTOR INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP: Nasir Abas knew and knows every single important leader in JI.
Sidney Jones is the leading regional expert on Islamic militancy in South-East Asia.
SIDNEY JONES: He would have known every member of the central committee. He would have known everyone who was responsible for setting up and teaching in the military academies both in Afghanistan and in the Philippines.
Many of those behind the Bali bombings are now in jail. Three are about to face the death penalty. Nasir Abas trained several of them. His own brother-in-law, Mukhlas, was the mastermind behind the first Bali bomb. Nasir Abas says despite his senior role in Jemaah Islamiah as one of its four strategic commanders, he had no prior knowledge of the attack. But Mukhlas confirmed the bombing was a JI operation.
NASIR ABAS: JI culture is not to surrender them, so I just only say to him that, "You are in danger, yeah. Your family also in danger so let your family with me and you go away anywhere that you like."
In the months following the bombing Nasir Abas says he confronted senior JI leaders about the use of indiscriminate violence to achieve their goal that of a regional Islamic state under sharia law. When the authorities came to arrest him, they came knowing his loyalty and conscience were split.
NASIR ABAS: How did police knew that I disagree with the bomb? How police knew I feel discomfortable with the leader Abu Bakar Bashir? And I think maybe police got the information from detainees who was been arrested earlier than me. Police cannot make me talk even to tell my name, yeah, because I just hoping that they kill me, yeah. But later I start to think again, think many things, that all of this happened that is the God that is because of the God will.
SIDNEY JONES: I think it's true that he didn't have information that the Bali bomb or indeed some of the other bombings were being planned because all of that operational planning and decision making was done by a non-structural part of Jemaah Islamiah.
In the days that followed his arrest he realised he now had a chance for a new mission in life and he began helping the police. A month after the second Bali bombing, the government scored another success. This video of a raid on the house of one of JI's leaders was filmed by Indonesian police.
SENIOR POLICEMAN BOMB TASK FORCE, (Translation): First you breack all the windows, One man keeps watch, another throws a smoke grenade. Don’t go in. Wait and see their reaction to the smoke grenade. Those are the steps. If they resist, shoot them.
Police raided the hide-out of Azahari bin Husin, who's believed to have designed the bombs used in all of of JI's big attacks in Indonesia.
BOMB TASK FORCE, (Translation): Dr Azahari and friends, in the name of the Districy Commander, we order you to come out.
Azahari, who'd been trained in Afghanistan by Nasir Abas, died in a hail of bullets as he attempted to hold off his attackers. Inside this house, police found a wealth of material, including Azahari's hands-on video demonstration. They also found four ready-made bombs and dozens more waiting to be assembled. Nasir Abas was brought in to help identify documents and those involved.
NASIR ABAS: What I can say that I can identify, yeah, either identify person, or identify document, identify words, statements and everything, yeah.
Sidney Jones says Indonesia has taken a high-risk approach in working with Nasir Abas, but it's paying off.
SIDNEY JONES: I think that the police get enormous credit for trusting Nasir Abas to the point that he has been able to play the role that he has. I can't imagine anybody in Australia or the United States or Europe giving someone who was so senior in the movement so much freedom of movement to actually move around and help. I think that he's not the only person who's been able to play this role. But I think the openness of the Indonesians in this regard deserves praise.
After a year in jail he's thankful it was Indonesian authorities who arrested him and not the Malaysians nor the Americans, otherwise his reformation or the role he is now playing may never have happened.
NASIR ABAS: Maybe if I was got arrested by the Americans and they sent me to Guantanamo, so maybe the situation also different in Indonesia. Maybe.
REPORTER: In... How? How? What do you mean - that..? What do you mean?
NASIR ABAS: Because, well, there is no nothing can There is nothing function or nothing benefit that they can get from me if they only just hold me, what you say, hold me inside a room, yeah, without I can do something good for people.
Released from prison, Nasir Abas is allowed to both reside and travel freely in Indonesia. He's been shown a level of respect few other Muslim militants have been accorded. He's been speaking out against his one-time comrades, urging them to rethink their position on jihad.
NASIR ABAS: I just want to stop the crime, yeah, because what they did, their operation, the bomb operation, that is a crime, that is not jihad, so that why I am against the action. So it's the only way to stop them is to get them to be arrested by the police and then they will stop. Because if they not be arrested by the police so they will think that what they did is right.
REPORTER: It makes you a traitor in their eyes doesn't it?
NASIR ABAS: Yeah. Some of them have already called me as a traitor. And not only that some of them claim that I was...I already be as an infidel.
Nasir Abas is also trying to reach out to other members of JI and today he's meeting Slamet Widodo, one of his former students. Widodo, alias Pepen, alias Urwah, trained under him in Afghanistan.
SLAMET WIDODO, (Translation): The Muslim there were being attacked by Russians soldiers, so we were obliged to defend Muslims there.
Widodo was arrested shortly after the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta. Nasir Abas went to talk to him in the prison and convinced him to follow a new path.
SLAMET WIDODO, (Translation): True jihad should be fought on the battlefield, when it is peaceful here, so how can you say there is a jihad when there is peace? So his advice was not to do anymore bombings.
Nasir Abas's routine now involves regular visits to prisons to see those convicted of terrorist offences, but his life continues to be lived on the edge. He knows he's considered a traitor by many, even within his own family.
NASIR ABAS: I am facing my own friends, I am facing people who knew me, yeah, I am facing people who was close to me before. And this is more difficult than you are facing to the people you do not know...do not know them.
Nasir Abas would like to travel further afield to spread his message but he can't travel outside Indonesia as the UN still lists him as a terrorist. For now, what he calls his new jihad is confined to Indonesia.
NASIR ABAS: Let us learn about Islam again, yeah. It doesn't mean that our knowledge is enough, yeah, to perform - what you say - Islam obligation, Muslim obligation. It need for us to learn again and to look back, yeah, for the origin Islam teaching so that ways we will know which way we are - in the true way or in the wrong way.
Credits
Reporter/Camera
GINNY STEIN
Editor
MICAH MCGOWAN
Fixer/Translator
SARI SUDARSONO
Subtitling
ROBIN FALLICK