JAKARTA, 10 March 2004 — Indonesia’s Supreme Court has halved a three-year prison sentence imposed on cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, a court official said yesterday.
The ruling means that Bashir, who is said by foreign governments to have led the Al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terror group, could be free within weeks or months.
Supreme Court spokesman Joko Upoyo said the court had reduced Bashir’s sentence for immigration offenses and forgery to one and a half years.
The time he has spent in detention will be deducted. It was Bashir’s second legal victory after an appeal court last November cleared him of plotting to topple the government through terrorism.
One of his lawyers, Mahendradatta, said yesterday that Bashir should be free between mid-April or the end of April, depending on when the start of the detention is counted from. Upoyo said Bashir could be free by the end of April at the earliest.
“The question is when he should be freed according to the law. Because we know that they (authorities) have been fooling around with his detention,” Mahendradatta said.
Lawyers would discuss asking for a judicial review of the case, he said.
“We are not focusing on how long the jail term is but on the legal basis for the decision. If the legal basis is wrong we won’t accept it even if Bashir has to serve only one day,” he said.
Australia warned the court decision would breathe new life into the group blamed for the 2002 Bali bombings.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Bashir’s release after “a very short period of time, that would be of some concern to us.”
“If he’s to be released, then that obviously would give Jemaah Islamiah a bit of revitalization,” Downer said on national radio. The Indonesian government for months in 2002 failed to move against Bashir despite claims by Singapore that he was linked to terrorism.
The cleric was arrested in a hospital bed in October 2002, a week after the Bali bombings, which killed 202 people — and which are blamed on JI.
When his trial began in April 2003, prosecutors accused him of heading JI, authorizing the network’s church bombings in Indonesia, which killed 19 people on Christmas Eve 2000 and plotting to blow up US targets in Singapore.
Last September a district court convicted Bashir of taking part in a JI plot to overthrow the government but said there was no proof he had led the network. It jailed him for four years for treason and for immigration-related offenses.
An appeal court in November overturned the treason conviction but ruled that Bashir must serve three years for immigration offenses and forging documents.
Bashir, 65, has always denied he is linked to terrorism and said the claims are part of a US and Jewish smear campaign against Islam.
Meanwhile, a report said yesterday an Indonesian militant arrested in Malaysia last December has confessed to plotting a bomb attack on Indonesia’s national police headquarters.
The Asian Wall Street Journal said Ahmad Said Maulana, one of a group of suspected militants arrested off Sabah state last December, had admitted involvement in a plot to drive an explosives-laden vehicle into the headquarters in Jakarta.
The attack was planned to coincide with Indonesia’s national police day celebrations this summer.
Maulana, now in custody in Malaysia, told his interrogators that he was a member of a previously unknown group called Republik Persatuan Islam Indonesia, the paper said.
