http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,12434094%5E28737,00.html
Jailed, not silenced
Sian Powell
March 04, 2005
THE militants roared, hundreds of police officers tensed, and the Islamic
preacher Abu Bakar Bashir stopped swivelling in his chair. The central
character in a drama that reached a climax yesterday, Bashir remained
stony-faced as judges convicted him of conspiracy in connection with the Bali
bombings.
With a cast of Western ambassadors, presidents and government ministers, a
rabble of lawyers, Bashir's story has become a tale of extremist religion
vsecularism and the mutual distrust between many Muslims and the West. Played
out against a backdrop of increasing tensions in Palestine, Afghanistan and
Iraq, the trial of the extremist cleric has been beamed into living-rooms
across Asia and splashed across newspapers around the world.
More than two years of diplomatic brinkmanship, media frenzy and hate-filled
hearings has now reached some kind of ending; not with a dramatically crafted
bang, but with an anti-climactic misfire. The extremist preacher was sentenced
to two years and six months in prison; just enough to infuriate both the squads
of his screaming supporters, who want him set free, and those in the
international world, who want him locked up forever. The preacher has already
been in prison for 10 months, leaving 20 months left to serve. It's likely,
too, he will appeal the sentence, and analysts believe he will soon stroll away
from prison.
Long accused of founding and leading the terrorist network Jemaah Islamiah, the
seemingly mild-mannered cleric has been tried twice in Jakarta courts, both
times facing severe penalties: the first time a potential life sentence, the
second, a possible death sentence. Both times he slipped free of heavy
penalties.
The first time around, the 66-year-old preacher was sentenced to a paltry four
years in prison for treason and minor immigration and document falsification
crimes, which was then twice reduced on appeal. Now, despite the efforts of
Indonesian police and prosecutors, it looks as though he will again beat the
rap, with the panel of five judges from the South Jakarta court acquitting him
of seven charges and convicting him on one.
Born in Jombang, in Java, Bashir was sent to the Gontor Islamic boarding school
and then made his way to the preaching faculty of Al-Irsyad University in Solo.
He failed to graduate but he became a leader of the radical Islamic Youth
Movement and honed his fiery rhetoric and fundamentalist passions. Legend has
it he also joined the rebel Darul Islam movement, known for its battles with
the secular establishment in the 1950s.
By 1972, with a fellow believer in strict Islamic sharia law, he set up the
notorious Al-Mukmin pesantren, or Islamic boarding school, in Ngruki, Solo. The
Ngruki school, as it became known, is the alma mater of a terror roll of JI
militants, including the chief Bali bomber, Mukhlas.
A few years later, in 1978, the preacher was arrested and jailed for
subversion, for circulating fiery tracts urging Muslims to resist secular
authority and fight the enemies of Islam. Eventually tried in 1982, he was
sentenced to a nine-year prison term, later reduced to four. Within a few years
of his release he fled to Malaysia, where he remained in exile until after the
despot Suharto was ousted. So Bashir is accustomed to prison and to enduring
the suspense of court proceedings. This time around, the prosecution finally
dropped a charge of inciting terrorism, which carries the death penalty, and
only demanded an eight-year prison sentence. Their demands were based on the
fairly feeble contention that Bashir should have prevented his followers from
committing terrorist acts.
Although many have no doubt Bashir founded JI, the question of whether he has
been involved more recently is cloudier. Witnesses testified in this trial that
he had visited JI's Hudaibiyah training camp in the Philippines in 2000 and
witnessed a passing-out ceremony. A senior JI operative, Nasir Abbas, now a
police informer, told the court Bashir inspected four lines of graduates at the
event. Abbas and another operative, Mustofa, flanked the cleric and the trio
was followed by two guards, Abbas explained. "And then we had a demonstration
of fighting and bombs." The judges said yesterday that Bashir was indeed the
emir, or leader of JI, and had visited the training camp in the Philippines.
Yet despite proving Bashir had a connection to JI, the prosecution failed to
produce any witnesses to directly link the preacher with the Bali bombings, the
blast at Jakarta's Marriott hotel in 2003 or other terrorist acts. No witness
would admit to any direct knowledge Bashir was JI's leader. The defence counsel
pointed out that at the time of the Marriott attack, Bashir had been imprisoned
for nine months. Yet the judges determined Bashir had permitted the Bali
bombings to go ahead, even though the crucial witnesses, Bali bombers Amrozi
and Mubarok, had not testified. The judges made the finding from the
prosecution's indictment, based on police interviews.
Indonesian prosecutors have done their best to keep Bashir behind bars. Yet
without an Internal Security Act such as Malaysia's or Singapore's, it is
necessary to find him guilty of something. Unlike the men the US has
incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay, extremists in Indonesia can't be kept locked up
indefinitely without trial.
Bashir has always denied knowing anything about JI and denied any connection
with terrorist acts. He has repeatedly asserted that his imprisonment is the
result of Western interference in Indonesia's judicial process.
The International Crisis Group's Southeast Asian director, Sidney Jones, an
acknowledged terrorism expert who has written a number of seminal papers on JI,
says it's clear Bashir was connected to JI, but it's not clear how involved he
was in operational matters. JI is not a proscribed organisation in Indonesia:
it's no crime to simply be associated or a member.
Nevertheless, various Western eminences believe in Bashir's guilt and want him
to stay in prison. Australia's Foreign Minister Alexander Downer called him a
"loathsome creature". Last year, the then US secretary of homeland security Tom
Ridge said Bashir had an "intense and deep involvement ... in both the
execution and planning of terrorist activities". According to the testimony of
a one-time State Department translator, Fred Burks, the US tried to persuade
the Indonesian president at the time, Megawati Sukarnoputri, to hand Bashir
over for transportation to an undisclosed location. She refused, the translator
said, because she believed Bashir was too well-known in Indonesia, unlike Omar
al-Faruq, the Kuwaiti Indonesia gave to the US.
According to one of Bashir's chief lawyers, Wiranan Adnan, the verdict today
hinged on whether the judges had succumbed to Western pressures. The
prosecution failed to provide any proof to back the charges, he says, and
failed to provide damaging witness testimony.
Calm and seemingly benign, Bashir has been a moderating influence on his hordes
of hysterical supporters who have packed the makeshift court in the auditorium
of Jakarta's Agriculture Department. "Allahu Akbar" or "God is great" they
shout at any opportunity, along with catcalls at the judges and prosecutors -
they once told the chief prosecutor they hoped he would have a stroke. Bashir
can flap a hand to quieten the young men, clad in Palestinian-style kaffiyehs,
and jackets emblazoned with Mujahidin or holy warrior. Many are from his
Indonesian Mujahidin Council (MMI), others are connected to his notorious
Ngruki Islamic boarding school. On occasion, hundreds have packed the
auditorium, watched by nearly as many uniformed and plain-clothes police.
Dressed in immaculately laundered shirts and sarongs, and industriously taking
notes, Bashir seems an unlikely leader of this hysterical rabble. Hasyim, an
MMI member, spends every day with Bashir in his cell in Cipinang prison,
organising his leader's schedule, ensuring food is brought in from outside or
cooked inside the prison, ensuring prisoners are on hand to do the laundry.
Bashir has been visited every day, sometimes by his wife and children,
sometimes by MMI leaders, occasionally by politicians from mainstream parties
and occasionally by high-profile Islamic scholars and leaders.
It seems the preacher inspires a certain level of devotion that straddles the
divides of wealth and prestige. "I have been with Abu Bakar Bashir since he was
evacuated from Solo in October 2002," Hasyim says. "I was with him when he got
to Jakarta and I have been with him ever since."
Sian Powell is The Australian's Jakarta correspondent. Additional reporting by
Olivia Rondonuwu.
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