Indonesia Sentences a Radical Cleric to 15 Years

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JAKARTA, Indonesia — A leading radical Islamic cleric the United States had pressed Indonesia to prosecute for the past decade was convicted Thursday after a four-month trial on terrorism charges. The cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir, 72, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for supporting a jihad training camp. The radical Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir after he was convicted by a court on terrorism charges on Thursday in Jakarta.

Jeers could be heard from his supporters outside the courthouse here in Jakarta when the district court judge announced the sentence on Thursday afternoon. In recent days, the authorities had been alerted to vague threats of a bombing campaign to coincide with the ruling, and thousands of extra police officers and hundreds of soldiers had fanned out across the city, the Indonesian capital, but no violence was reported. Lawyers for the cleric immediately said they would appeal. After the announcement of the sentence — far shorter than the life sentence that the prosecutors had sought — Mr. Bashir delivered a short statement saying that he rejected the judgment because it was not based on Islamic law but on laws made by “infidels.” Guards could be seen ushering a smiling Mr. Bashir out of the courtroom.

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The court sided with prosecutors who said that Mr. Bashir had helped mobilize and finance a militant group that set up an armed training camp in the province of Aceh, in northern Sumatra. The group, which called itself Al Qaeda of the Veranda of Mecca but appeared to have no ties to the group founded by Osama bin Laden, was violently suppressed by the police last year. Mr. Bashir, who denied any involvement with the group but defended its actions as legal under Islam, said during the trial that the Indonesian authorities fabricated the charges to please the United States.

The ruling puts an end for now to the activities of Mr. Bashir, whom the Indonesian authorities had often appeared reluctant to prosecute for fear of antagonizing Islamic extremists. A founder of the radical Jemaah Islamiyah movement, Mr. Bashir spent a couple of years in prison in the past decade on various charges. But the courts cleared him on serious terrorism-related charges, culminating in 2006 when the Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s terrorism conviction. He is believed to have lost much of his influence in recent years with Indonesia’s radical fringes. Still, last year, the police arrested Mr. Bashir after linking three members of his new, above-ground Islamic organization, Jamaah Ansharut Tauhid, to the group in Aceh.

The short-lived new group trained in Aceh’s remote, jungle-covered mountains and stockpiled weapons, the authorities said. Last year, the police killed and arrested more than 120 people suspected of having links to the group, including Dulmatin, one of Southeast Asia’s most wanted terrorism suspects. The authorities said that the group had been planning attacks against foreigners and had previously made plans to assassinate moderate Muslims, including President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Like Mr. Bashir himself, the group advocated replacing Indonesia’s democratic government with an Islamic state.

The United States and Australia had long pressed the Indonesian authorities to take a harder line against Mr. Bashir. But Mr. Yudhoyono’s government has been repeatedly criticized by human rights activists for being soft on radical Muslim groups, particularly the Islamic Defenders Front, an organization that routinely carries out violent protests against Christians, other religious minorities and moderate Muslims.

In recent years, the United States has praised Indonesia’s antiterrorism campaigns, which have drastically curtailed the activities of extremists, especially against Western targets. The last major attack took place in July 2009 with the nearly simultaneous suicide bombings of the Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott hotels here in Jakarta, in which seven people and the two bombers were killed.

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