DENPASAR, Indonesia - Confessed Bali bomber Amrozi, laughing and joking as Indonesia's top policeman questioned him about his role in the Oct. 12 attack, said yesterday that he was "delighted" with the results of the blast.

In an odd show staged for the news media, reporters were invited to watch through windows as Indonesia's police chief, Dai Bachtiar, conducted the interrogation. Amrozi, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, waved and smiled for the cameras.

The public interrogation was apparently designed to demonstrate to skeptical Indonesians that Amrozi had acted freely in confessing that he took part in the bombing to further the agenda of extremist Muslims. The blast killed 191 people, most of them foreign tourists.

At a news conference shortly afterward, police showed a videotape in which Amrozi apologized to his family for involving them in the plot but did not apologize to his victims or their families.

The 35-year-old auto mechanic, who authorities say fought in Afghanistan against Soviet occupation, was arrested last week after police traced the ownership of the van used in the Bali bombing and found that he was the last owner.

Chief Bachtiar told reporters that a key organizer and financier of the bombing was the shadowy terrorism suspect Imam Samudra, who has been wanted since early 2001 for his role in a series of deadly church bombings.

Amrozi, who has confessed to police that he helped plant the Bali bomb, was recruited two years ago by Samudra to begin making explosives for extremist Muslims fighting Christians in Indonesia's Maluku province, the chief said.

Amrozi had returned to his home village of Tenggulun before the attack. He said that when he heard on the radio at 7 a.m. Oct. 13 that the bomb had gone off, he laughed so hard that his wife asked him what was so funny.

Amrozi has implicated his brother Ali Imron and led police to the Al-Islam boarding school in his village, which police investigators say was the base for members of the terrorist group.

Richard C. Paddock writes for the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.