Indonesian police said on Monday the chief suspect in the Bali bomb blasts was a student of detained Muslim religious leader Abu Bakar Bashir, alleged spiritual head of a Southeast Asian militant Islamic group linked to the attack. A Jakarta court on Monday ruled Bashir's arrest on separate accusations was legal, a major boost for police who detained the radical cleric last month over a series of church bombings in Indonesia in 2000 and a plot to kill the president.

Police have also taken three more people to Bali from Java for questioning over the October 12 Bali bomb attacks that killed more than 180 people, mainly foreign tourists.

Major-General Made Mangku Pastika, head of a multinational team hunting for the Bali bombers, said police had found no evidence so far linking Bashir himself to the Bali attacks.

"Abu Bakar Bashir is a major preacher who has many students," Pastika told a news conference in Bali. "One of his students is Amrozi," he said, referring to the chief suspect.

Indonesia's defence minister said on Friday that Amrozi was a Jemaah Islamiah member and that al Qaeda was behind the attacks.

Pastika said Amrozi had admitted taking Bashir from the his home in Solo in Central Java to a small Islamic school, called Al Islam, in the suspect's village in East Java.

"But we haven't found any evidence that Bashir ordered Amrozi to conduct the blast. So there is a missing link between Abu Bakar Bashir and Amrozi," he said.

Speaking from his bed in a police hospital, Bashir said he had been to the school at Amrozi's village twice but denied knowing Amrozi. He said he did not know whether Amrozi was present at his sermons, or had taken him to East Java.

Asked if he easily forgot people whom he met, Bashir said:

"Many people come. Sometimes for those I just meet, by tomorrow I have forgotten (them)," he said.

In Jakarta, a court rejected a defence application that the detention of Bashir was unlawful.

"We reject the request of the plaintiff and order that the detention be continued," judge Tjaroko Imam Widodadi said.

Lawyers for Bashir said they would appeal.

Bashir's legal team had said the police case against the religious leader was built entirely on the testimony of a self-confessed al Qaeda member. Police said the case rested on much more.

PHOTO CAPTION

Indonesian soldiers patrol the streets of Banda Aceh, the capital of Indonesia's rebellious Aceh province, on November 11. Indonesia's military chief promised that a siege of rebels in the province would not be over until a peace deal was agreed. REUTERS/Murizal Hamzah