JAKARTA, 3 September 2003 — An Indonesian court yesterday convicted radical Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir of sedition and sentenced him to four years in prison. But judges acquitted him of the main charge of leading Jemaah Islamiyah, the Southeast Asian terror group linked to Al-Qaeda.

“In order that the defendant does not repeat his mistake ... he must be punished,” said Judge Muhammad Saleh. “We, the judges, hand down a sentence of four years in prison.”

The mixed result and the lenient sentence have thrown an unclear light on the efforts of the world’s most populous Muslim nation to crack down on terrorism and militancy.

The sentence, which fell well short of the maximum penalty of life imprisonment, suggested that Indonesian authorities want to curb extremism without alienating mainstream Islamic opinion.

The trial was politically sensitive for President Megawati Sukarnoputri, whose coalition government depends on the support of moderate Muslim parties.

Representatives of these parties, including her own vice president, Hamzah Haz, have in the past expressed support for Bashir.

Prosecutors had asked the court to sentence Bashir to 15 years in jail on the main charge of belonging to a terrorist organization and the lesser charges of sedition and immigration offenses.

In a sometime contradictory six-hour decision by a five-judge panel, Saleh said there was insufficient evidence to support the principal charge that Bashir was head of Jemaah Islamiyah, which is blamed for a string of bombings across the region.

But, “the defendant ... had knowledge of an organization that is trying to topple the government,” Saleh said. “That is why the secondary charge has been proven.”

He was also found guilty of entering Indonesia illegally in 1999. Bashir, 65, said he would appeal the verdict. “I cannot accept the judgment,” he said.

The trial was seen as a key test of Indonesia’s commitment to confronting militancy. Last month, a court sentenced to death a Muslim radical for his role in last year’s terror attacks on two nightclubs in Bali in which 202 people died.

The verdict was initially greeted by joyous cheers from hundreds of Bashir’s supporters, who had mistakenly believed that their leader had been cleared of all charges. After the trial ended, some followers chanted “Hang America.”

Prosecutors tried to link Bashir to Jemaah Islamiyah, which is said to be seeking to establish a fundamentalist super-state in Southeast Asia. But Bashir insisted that the group did not even exist and said the charges against him had been fabricated by the United States and Israel.

Prosecutors also linked Bashir with Indonesian radical Riduan Isamuddin Hambali, who was arrested in central Thailand last month and is being interrogated by US authorities at an undisclosed location. Hambali is said to be the operations chief of Jemaah Islamiyah and Al-Qaeda’s point man in Southeast Asia.

Bashir, who taught at a religious boarding school in Central Java, was arrested in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 12 Bali bombings. He has not been charged with involvement in that attack or the Aug. 5 bombing of Jakarta’s JW Marriott Hotel that killed 12 people. But prosecutors maintained that under his leadership, Jemaah Islamiyah plotted to kill Megawati and establish a hard-line Islamic regime.

Defense attorneys earlier challenged prosecutors’ use of testimony from suspects held without trial in Singapore and Malaysia under tough internal security laws.

The attorneys claim key testimony was obtained under torture, and that the witnesses -- who addressed the judges via video-link -- should instead have been brought to Indonesia to speak freely in open court.

“There was not a single proof that Bashir intended to topple the government,” Adnan Nasution, Bashir’s defense lawyer, said after the trial.

Meanwhile, the country’s top detective was quoted as saying yesterday that Al-Qaeda provided funding through alleged terror chief Hambali for bombings in Indonesia.

“If the money wasn’t from Al-Qaeda where was it from? Hambali was Al-Qaeda’s contact so where else would the money have come from except from Al-Qaeda?” Inspector General Erwin Mappaseng was quoted as saying by the Detikcom online news service.