Indonesia’s radical Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir appealed to reduce 15-year jail term on Tuesday (January 12), pledging no wrongdoings on all allegation.
The 78-year-old, who was sentenced to 15 years in jail in 2011, attended the hearing in Cilacap district court in central Java province, the town near notorious prison island Nusa Kambangan where Bashir is jailed.
Supporters of Bashir cheered as he walked to the court room escorted by heavy police forces.
This is the first time Bashir has appeared in public in five years after he was sentenced for helping plan a paramilitary group that aimed to kill the country’s former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
Bashir denied any wrongdoings in his opening speech.
“My role in this group is unimportant but I receive the heaviest punishment compared to the other (members). So it is clear that this is a conspiracy, not a fair sentence,” Bashir told the court.
“I help with the physical training and teach the group to use weapons in Aceh because these lessons are to protect and defend Islam in Indonesia and abroad, especially in Saudi (Arabia). I fulfill those duties according to the Islamic teaching, but not the terror act,” he added.
About a hundred of Bashir’s supporters watched the trial on livestream in the courthouse’s yard.
A supporter urged the court to clear Bashir from all charges.
“It is clear that the United States are behind this because they feel uneasy and worried they will lose their ground in Indonesia if Sharia law is implemented. So what we want is to free Abu Bakar Bashir from all charges without any condition,” said Syiahbuddin, a supporter watching the court session from outside.
Bashir was found guilty of helping plan and fund a paramilitary training camp discovered in 2010 in a remote mountainous part of Aceh, whose members sought to assassinate then president, destabilise Southeast Asia’s largest economy and turn the officially pluralist and mostly moderate Muslim country into an Islamic state.
Bashir, who was acquitted on a charge of possessing weapons, had denied involvement in the plan.
“The name of the cleric (Abu Bakar Bashir) is never mentioned in the primary allegation at the beginning of the hearing, he is not involved in the mentioned terrorist act. But why does he becomes a terrorist in the following hearings? The verdict is a mistake,” said Bashir’s lawyer, Achmad Michdan, after the hearing.
Bashir was accused by western and regional intelligence officials of being the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiah, a Southeast Asia militant group blamed for the 2002 Bali bombings and a string of other attacks in Indonesia. (Reuters)