World News

Indonesia sentences cleric to prison

JAKARTA (AP) - A court sentenced Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir on Sept. 2 to four years in prison for sedition, but threw out charges that he belonged to al-Qaeda's main Asian ally, Jemaah Islamiyah, even though some of Southeast Asia's top terror suspects have named him as the group's spiritual leader.

The trial was seen as an important test of Indonesia's commitment to confronting Islamic militancy, and the mixed result and lenient sentence was a blow to Indonesia's efforts to combat terrorism.

The five-judge panel declared there was insufficient evidence that the 65-year-old preacher is the top power behind - or even a member of - Jemaah Islamiyah, the group that has been blamed for the October 2002 Bali nightclub bombings, which killed 202 people, and the Aug. 5 bombing of Jakarta's Marriott Hotel, which killed 12 people.

However, they also found that Bashir was privy to and did nothing to stop plans by Jemaah Islamiyah to overthrow the government of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country.

The sentence, which fell well short of the 15-years imprisonment sought by prosecutors, suggested that Indonesian authorities want to curb extremism without alienating mainstream Islamic opinion.

The result also suggested that legal protections instituted after the 1998 overthrow of the dictator Suharto have made stamping out Islamic militancy more difficult in Indonesia than in neighboring Singapore and Malaysia, where suspects are held under draconian internal security laws.

Shukan ST: Sept. 12, 2003

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