Indonesia has made progress in tackling militant groups in recent years, killing many of their leaders. In June, it jailed cleric Abu Bakar Bashir for funding the Aceh group, which police say was trying to turn the country into an Islamic state.

“It has been proven legally and he is convincingly guilty of committing criminal and terrorist acts,” judge Musa Arif said at the west Jakarta court in sentencing Abu Tholut.

Tholut was arrested last December. Police said the 50-year-old firearms expert went to Afghanistan in the late 1980s before returning to Asia to train militant group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI).

Prosecutors had asked for a 12-year jail term for Tholut’s role in Aceh, the only province in the mostly Muslim Indonesia that has Islamic Sharia law.

Tholut’s lawyer, Asludin Hatjani, played down the sentence, saying it did not prove Tholut was involved in setting up the paramilitary camp.

“It is not proven that he was engaged in Aceh, it was only proven that Abu Tholut was in possession of arms,” he said.